Inebriated Quest
by flabbyknight
Summary: One girl's epic journey to get smashed. Link to quest in profile.
1. Day 1

You wake up in a dark metal box filled with blood and rotting things. Huh. Well you can honestly say that this is not the weirdest place you have ever woken up. Probably not even in your top ten, though you're pretty sure it's in your top twenty. You try to remember how you got here, but a chorus of voices is speaking/scream/singing/whispering at you, none of them are speaking any language you understand. This frankly makes it a pain to concentrate.

You stand there for several minutes trying to remember how you got here, when you realize you have no idea who you are, let alone where you are. Everything is a big blank space before you woke up just now, which makes it weird that you remember waking up in other places and the same time don't. You feel like this is not the first time you forgot who you were either, which just puzzles you even more. You spend several more minutes contemplating how one can simultaneously remember and not remember something, and conclude that you are way to sober to be thinking those kinds of thoughts.

You decide to instead to focus on where you are. You think you have been buried alive in some sort of metal coffin, judging from the smell with a corpse. Fortunately there appears to be light coming from behind you, so you're not surrounded by several feet of dirt, unless somebody put a light source in your coffin. You're not sure why somebody would do that, but you suppose that religion makes people do strange things. You don't have enough room to turn around and see what the light is though.

Actual now that you think about maybe you where buried dead and you are in fact a zombie and it's you that smells bad. Do zombies have a sense of smell? You don't thinks so, but you have never been a zombie before you can't be sure. You waste several more minutes debating your undeath, before deciding that you don't care, because you now have headache from the smell and all the people in your head trying to get your attention.

You're kind of mad that you got a headache without even getting drunk first, which is just unfair. You decided that you're tired of standing here in this stinky coffin, when you could be doing better things, like getting drunk. You wrack your brain for ways to escape, before deciding on using brute force to make your way out.

It's time to blow this popsicle stand. You have trouble picking up momentum due to the cramped space in the coffin, but you are hoping that your zombie strength will pick up the slack. You slam your fist in to the side of the metal coffin. Thump. Ow. Okay you think that you may have broken your hand punching the wall. The wall is also completely undamaged. Okay then, maybe you need to activate your undead powers first, to break out. Now how to tap into your inner necrotic energies, maybe if you think zombie thoughts you'll get zombie strength?

You concentrate with all your might on zombie activities like shambling, moaning, and the hunger for brains. You let a moan of "braaaaains" and swing your fist into the wall again. Motherfucker. Okay maybe you shouldn't have used your broken hand again. You glare at your hand that dares to fail you again and again, its betrayals are stacking up and you are beginning to wonder if it's plotting against you. Your focus is on the pain that your traitorous hand is maliciously forcing upon you, you wish that it would stop the bastard. You feel a warm sensation building up in your body, quickly getting hotter and hotter. You feel that if you hold onto it any longer it will burn you, so you force the energy out of your body.

Your hand miraculously stops hurting and in fact looks good as new. Cool. Looks like you got zombie regeneration or something. You decided to forgive your errant limb for its earlier misdeeds since it chose to redeem itself. You are nothing if not merciful. You stare at your hand contemplatively wondering what else it could do. You focus on your hand again, but instead of wishing the pain away, you instead think thoughts of destruction towards your metal prison. You feel the warm sensations building up in your body again and once again release it before it gets too hot. Your hand becomes wreathed in electricity for about a second before going out.

Wait zombies don't have lightning powers or do they? Maybe you're a Frankenstein? Whatever, it's not important. You summon lightening to your hand again and plunge it in to coffin. Your hand slides through the wall like a hot knife through butter. It only occurs to you afterwards that metal conducts electricity and you could have just electrocuted yourself to death. So maybe you are immune to your electricity or electricity in general? Also you pretty sure that electricity does not allow one to cut through solid steel now that you think about it. Whatever, your magic zombie lightning does what it wants to, when it wants to and nobody can tell it otherwise.

You pull your hand out of the hole you made. The hole looks about two feet deep, beyond the metal appears to be some sort of chalky substance and wood. You begin to wail away at the wall ripping large chunks out of the wall. It takes you less than two minute for you to break out through the other side. You squeeze your way through the opening and look around. You appear to be in a hallway that is surprisingly well light. When you look up you see glowing squares attached to the ceiling. You are impressed that they can afford so many magic items of light.

You think you may be in a temple of some sort of sun god judging from how bright it is in here, so you should probably get out of here fast as you can. Sun gods tend to like smiting the undead and you don't want the get your ass smote by some priest, you've only been unalive for like 10-20 minutes tops. Fortunately you see a door made of glass, fancy, that appears to lead outside. So you scuttle over to it and go outside.

You behold a city made of steel and glass, many of the buildings tower above you. You have no idea where you are. You decide that you best way to get unlost is to get even more lost until you know where you are. It's the perfect plan and nothing could possible go wrong. You are a genius! You close your eyes and do a pirouette. You immediately slip and fall due to the gunk on your shoes. You land face first into the ground smashing your nose. Today is just not your day, like at all.

You sit up and pull more energy through your body to fix up your nose and then you take stock of the rest of your body to check it for more injuries. You appear to be covered in blood and other vile fluids, with bits of cloth pads sticking to you. Gross. You consider how you are going to get all this crap off of you when you feel your necrotic energies building up again. When you release it this time you feel a rubbing sensation all over your body and clothes.

When you look down you notice that all the grime on your skin and clothes are gone. The pads have fallen to the ground and they look good as new. Actually so does the ground in a 15 foot radius circle around you. So you have super zombie cleaning powers? Okay maybe you are not zombie, you are 95% sure that the zombies don't have good hygiene and if they had cleaning powers, they totally would.

Maybe you are a lich? They can use magic and you think that you could be using magic. But then where is your phylactery? Shit. You hope nobody smashes it up, you better be careful in case somebody did. What were you doing again? Right! You were getting lost to get unlost. With a skip to your step you head in the direction you are facing.

To your relief you find that you are wandering away from the buildings that tower above the skyline. You are pretty sure that buildings are not supposed to be that tall and they could fall over any second now. As you move through the city you see people whizzing by in metal carriages, you make sure to stay out of their way, if you got hit you are pretty sure you would splatter and no amount healing would fix that. As you move forward the buildings become more and more rundown. You keep your eye out for bars to end this cursed sobriety, but so far you have not seen any.

As you are crossing the street you spot man with a spirit floating behind him. The man's face is empty of all emotions and his eyes are those of a dead man. The spirit looks like a weird hodgepodge of a tiger and an elephant. You feel a itching at the back of your head as you stare at it. Its name is on the tip of your tongue. _**Baku**_. That's it, it's a Baku! If you remember right they are spirits that eat nightmares. However sometimes if they are malicious they will also eat dreams and hope of their target. That poor man! You glare at the Baku with your fists clenched. You have to do something to free this man from its hold.

* * *

Iwao was simple going through the motions of life these days. He took no joy in anything he did. He tried so many different things that others enjoyed but nothing moved him anymore. He remembered a time when he had dreams and goals. But the desire for those things left him when had shattered and turned to ash. He only lived to serve Kenta's whims now. They had known before Leviathan tore Japan apart, before he broke. Kenta was everything he was not. He was filled with passion and fire. Iwao had no dreams so he would make Kenta's become true.

He was going on his daily walk. It was something he used to do before he died. It had long ago lost all meaning, but now he did it out some sort of ritual. As he walked done the sidewalk he noted a girl coming the opposite direction. Her face sported a manic smile that was far too wide to be called pretty. Her eyes where such a bright blue that they seemed to glow. She skipped instead of walking and was singing. The words were nonsense, but they resonated deeply into his mind.

When she looked in his direction the smile of her face died, transforming into a visage of rage. Her hands were clenched so tightly that they were bleeding. She marched towards him, her stride determined. Iwao tensed preparing for a fight if she attacked, but she stopped about five feet away from him. " **Hollow Man you are being haunted by a Baku. It is devouring your hopes and dreams. If you wish it, I can banish it for a year and a day.** " Her voice echoed as though dozens were speaking: some of them were feminine, others masculine, and a few otherworldly. Iwao blinked at her words. The girl was clearly insane, you could tell just be looking at her, however part of him wanted her words to be true. He stared at her in silence for a minute before he gave a jerky nod.

She took a step back and stared at the space above his shoulder, her face scrunched up in concentration. Suddenly her body seemed to spasm and then she vomited up blood. She becomes a blur, ducking and weaving as she moves away from him. Iwao is startled when she screams and claw marks appear up and down her arm. Her arm hangs uselessly at her side as she continues to dodge empty air for another thirty seconds. She then smiles and Iwao feels as if though an iron spike and been driven into his head. Even with the blinding pain he feels the emptiness that had been suffocating him pouring out of the hole in his head.

The pain stops suddenly as it started leaving a behind a warm feeling. Iwao felt tears trickling down his face. Was he crying? He could not remember the last time he had ever cried. The girl wrapped her good arm around him and pulled him into a hug. The smile that was far too large was on her face again, showing far too much bloodstained teeth, but it seemed much more comforting now. It felt nice to be held. When was the last time he had been hugged? He stood their enjoying the sensation until a thought occurred to him. 'A year and a day' before he became empty again.

* * *

Yay! You made a new friend! He is crying right now, but you can tell that they are happy tears. You sing aloud one of the songs in your head to comfort him. While you do not know what the words mean, you can feel that it is happy song of fire and rebirth. Helping people out always makes you feel warm and fuzzy. You hear a rumble and thunder clap. You look up at That-Which-Storms, the storm spirit that you summoned. It is giving its goodbyes now that it has done the services that you requested of it, before returning to the metaplane.

You let go of the Hollow Man and began to deal with your wounds. While hugs are nice your arm really hurts. You close the wound on your arm, but the damage caused by the summoning of That-Which-Storms can only be healed naturally. You had to push past your normal limits to summon a spirit strong enough to defend you from the Baku. Your hoodie sleeve is also ruined from when the Baku almost tore your arm off.

The Hollow Man speaks up as you are removing the blood from your clothes. "Do you need assistance?"

You pause as you think over his question before nodding vigorously "Yeah! I need booze so bad right now. I haven't had anything to drink for an hour!" Just saying it out load makes you shudder at the thought of being deprived of alcohol for so long.

He blinks and says "Are you not too young to be drinking?"

Wait how old are you anyway? Well that does not matter anyway you are never too young to stopped drinking. "Nope!" you chirp.

He stares at you for second and then shrugs. "I have a friend who has plenty of alcohol if you wish it."

You eagerly nod and follow behind him. As you walk you feel another song bubbling up in your throat so you let it out. The song starts out happy and sweet, but as it goes on it becomes melancholy and bitter. The Hollow man looks over at you and asks "What is that you are singing?"

You pause as you try to put the song into words and then you explain. "It's a song about two girls that become sisters. They live a happy peaceful life, but then one day the First girl's mother dies. She is distraught and her father broken. The Second puts her back together again and the two become closer than ever."

You stumble here because you feel an overwhelming sadness as you continue to speak "While the First leaves on a trip the Second is attacked by bandits, but is saved by a hunter. The Second goes mad with fear, desperate for help she returns to the Hunter and asks for advice. The Hunter tells 'There are two kinds of people the predators and the prey. Become a predator and no one shall ever harm you again.'"

Your face feels wet now, which is strange because it is not raining. "When the First returned the Second decides that she is prey and tormented for it. She hoped to turn the First into a predator like herself, but when that did not work. She grew to hate the First for being weak. The First is lost and confused by the Second's betrayal and does not know what to do, so does nothing. For two years she torments the First, before finally giving up on her and sealing her in a tomb darkness and filth."

The Hollow Man looks at you strangely but does not say anything. You no longer feel like speaking or singing. It is another twenty minutes before you reach your destination. When you enter the building you see a large man with steel mask and covered in dragon tattoos. Behind him towers a dragon from the east. It looks down all of you with a look of contempt and hunger in its eyes. All around you are men and woman dressed in green and red.

The Hollow Man and the Wyrm are speaking to each other in a language that you do not know. As the conversation goes on it gets more heated to the point where the Wyrm catches fire. He points at you and speaks "Kill the girl. She has mastered Oni Lee" The people in green and red draw weapons and move towards you.

You only have time to think 'What in the world is an Oni Lee?' When the Hollow Man suddenly appears in front of you and grabs you. He then throws you up into air into the arms of another Hollow Man. He spins you around and tosses you towards a closed window which is then 'quickly smashed open when a different Hollow Man diving through it. You then land on the Hollow Man's back, who was waiting to catch you outside, and clamp on for dear life. He immediately begins to run down the street as you hold on to him while trying to process what just happened.

At this point you hear a roar and the Wyrm leap through the same window you did and running full pelt at you. Nope. You don't want to fight a dragon at all. They are nature's answer to overpopulation and all around bullshit. You wrack you brains for a way to slow him down, before deciding to summon a spirit. The spirit of Maple Way and Evans St. rises out of the asphalt. He appears to be a man with skin of asphalt covered in graffiti. You point at Wyrm and yell "Stall him!"

Maple-Evans leaves astral space and charges the Wyrm slamming a fist of lightning and asphalt into him. The Wyrm bellows in rage and returns the blow with his own fire punch. "Thank you" you yell to Maple-Evans as you continue ride away from the fight on the Hallow Man's back. You lose sight of them when the Hallow Man rounds the corner. He runs down several more alley ways before slowing down his pace to a jog.

He turns back to looks at you and says "We should find a safe place to lay low. Unfortunately Kenta knows where most of my safe houses are, so I will have to find supplies for us later. But there are plenty of abandoned buildings in the area so we should be able to find a place to rest."

You nod, that makes sense to you. "Oh by the way what is an Oni Lee and why was the Wyrm mad that I mastered how to use it?"

He stares at you with a strange expression on his face before responding "I am Oni Lee. He thinks you are using parahuman powers to control me."

Parahuman? Must be their word for mages or something. "Wait!? The Wyrm thinks I am using mind control powers on you, why would he think that!"

The Hallow Man replies "Since I am no longer being afflicted by the … Baku, my mannerisms are very different. When Kenta accused you of mastering me, I tried to defend you. Kenta does not like being questioned and I have never done so before. This cemented in his mind that you where controlling me."

Well crap. Now you have a pissed off dragon after you for stealing his friend away from him. You brood on how one goes about proving one is not mind controlling people when the Hollow Man puts you down and moves towards a building covered in graffiti. "Wait here I will back in second." he says before turning into ash. About minute later he pops back and says "The building appears to be abandoned. We should rest here while they are out looking for us." He walks over to the door and kicks it in before walking inside. You follow him inside.

The building is pretty dusty and does not look like anyone has been here for awhile. He leads you to a room with some couches. He points to them and says "You should get some rest, I will keep watch."

You lay down on the couch. Its lumpy and dusty, but its better then the ground. You look over at him and ask "Aren't you going to get any sleep?"

He shrugs "I will be fine."

You close your eyes. You're actually pretty tired. Your day has been pretty hectic with escaping tombs, banishing Baku and fleeing dragons. Your last thought before you fall asleep is 'All that I didn't get anything to drink.'

* * *

'Today had been a disaster' thought Colin. It had just been one failure after another today. First the Hebert girl had a violent and public trigger event, when she ripped her way out of her locker and through a wall. The school had contacted the PRT as soon as they had noticed the gaping hole in the wall. But by the time they had got there it was all over the school that Hebert had triggered in the locker, yet somehow nobody knew how she had gotten in there.

Judging from the damage done to the locker and the wall, Hebert was some sort of brute or striker. Colin had sent the Wards and the rest of Protectorate out to see if they could find the girl as quickly as possible. Recently triggered parahumans were often irrational and violent, so containing before she hurt herself or others was paramount.

It was when he kept Shadow Stalker back to learn what she knew about Hebert that he stumbled across the truth. When she tried to act like she barely knew Hebert, his lie detector had gone off. After several minutes of interrogation, she finally confessed she had been involved with the locker incident. Shadow Stalker had been the one that caused the Hebert to trigger in the first place. He had been furious at her and himself. Since he was in charge of her, he was indirectly the cause of her triggering, the thought made his stomach turn.

Then the search for Hebert had to be called off when Lung had started rampaging through the docks. He had been forced to send the Wards back to base, while he and the rest of the Protectorate tried to capture Lung. Lung apparently had been fighting some sort of construct made of asphalt to the point where he was over twenty feet tall.

It vanished into thin air a minute after they joined the fight. They did not stand a chance at that point of defeating Lung. During the fight Lung had swatted him away like a fly and broken Colin's back. They retreated at that point, in the end accomplishing nothing. If it was not for Panacea he would still be crippled, because he had been to slow. It was only as he had laid there in his hospital bed stewing over his defeat and waiting to be healed, that he realized the construct may have been created by Hebert. The damage to the wall could have easily been done by the creature.

Then to top it all of some group had kidnapped Daniel Hebert, when they were busy with Lung. Mr. Hebert's neighbors said men armed with machine guns had kicked down the door and pulled him into a van, but beyond that they had no information. Somebody had called away the PRT guards that were watching him in case his daughter showed up. The caller had told them that they were needed due to the ABB moving in the force in the Docks. No one could trace were the order had come from, meaning they had a leak somewhere in the PRT.

If only he had been more efficient he could have stopped all this from happening. If had kept a better eye on Shadow Stalker the Hebert girl would not have triggered. If he had got to school faster he could have tracked down the girl before she met Lung. If had finished his tranquilizer sooner he could have stopped Lung. But no he was slow, weak and a failure. In the decade that he had been the local leader of the Protectorate what had he actually accomplished?

Empire Eighty Eight was strong as ever, no it had gotten more powerful since he took over. Azn Bad Boys came in to existence under his watch and now had free reign where ever the Empire did not contest them. He hadn't even managed to take in Skidmark and the Merchants. He looked down at his halberd on his work bench, his greatest work, completely useless to change anything. No, it was not his halberd that he needed to fix but himself, he was inefficient. If he had died today fighting Lung he doubted any one would mourn him, he had no friends, no family, no-

-Colin suddenly woke. What was he doing again? He looked down at his halberd and ideas started streaming into his head. Not plans for his halberd, but plans to make himself better, more efficient. He had been doing it wrong this whole time. He began drawing up plans for additional arms to attach to himself, after all two arms limited how much work you could do at once.

* * *

Taylor woke up inside a large stone room. The walls were covered in spiraling patterns that seemed to change shape and color as she watched them. The only exit was a large archway that seemed to lead into a black abyss. In front of her stood a fifty foot rat made of fire and lightning. He looked down at her and spoke "Hey. About time you got here."

 _What_. Taylor said "What."

He sighed "I have been waiting for you to go to sleep, so we could finally talk. I have a lot things that we need to get through and very little time to do so."

"First thing that you need to understand that is you have been possessed by a … cluster fuck of souls. Second is that everything we talk about here, your conscious self will not really remember, however some of it will hopefully imprint on her. Third-"

"Wait back up! I am being possessed? Who are you and where am I?" Taylor interrupted.

He scowled and with irritation in his voice "None that is really important. I have much more important things we need to cover."

"I disagree!" Taylor said, glaring at the rat.

"Fine!" he exclaimed "Fucking mortals. Look some idiot mage was performing experiments with multi-dimensional magic, it went wrong and he fused his soul with someone else in a different dimension. They both went insane and few years later they tried to do the spell again and fused with someone else. Rinse and repeat thirty six fucking times. I was the familiar of the first mage and my name is Mr. Nibbles."

"That is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard" Taylor yelled and then in after thought added "and magic is not real."

"I am not having this argument with you. We have maybe five minutes tops to discuss what we need to talk about and I am not wasting my time on this." Mr. Nibbles responded.

"I-" Taylor began.

"Shut up. Third stop leaving your astral perception on all the time it leaves you exposed to astral threats like that parasite you picked a fight with earlier. You're lucky you were only fighting its avatar and it was not expecting you to even see it, alone interact with it."

"What were those things anyway? Both Oni Lee and Lung had them?" asked Taylor

He paused in thought for a second before answering "From what I can tell they are multi-dimensional creatures that have made some sort of soul pact with those humans. They are not actually on this plane of existence and they can't interact with it except through the human they made the pact with."

"So I destroyed the pact it had with Oni Lee." She asked.

"No. You just disrupted its avatar and stopped it from being able to view into this dimension for about a year. I would advise against fighting those things again like I said earlier you were very lucky last time." Mr. Nibbles responded.

He paused before continuing "Great we got off topic and we are out of time. We will have to continue this when you fall asleep again. Before you wake up there is one last thing. I have a way of increasing your magical power greatly, normally it would take a month but I can expedite the process greatly due to our unique nature. But it will be extremely painful and you will be out of commission for at least a day."

* * *

AN: I am reposting my quest from questionable questing over here. I compiled all of the chapters in day 1 into one single chapters. If you see any typos please pm. Reviews are welcome.


	2. Day 5

Your everything hurts. You knew that the couch was lumpy but this is ridiculous. You try to sit up and immediately regret that decision as the pain intensifies. You pump out some healing energy, but it does jack shit to dull the pain. You think hateful thoughts towards this evil couch that betrayed you so vigorously.

You also feel cloth pushing against your face, now that you think about it. You open your eyes and notice that you are wearing some sort of mask. Weird. You start feeling it so you can get an idea of what you look like with it on, when you hear a muffled noise somewhere to your right. You slowly turn your body over, wincing as you do so.

You see a blond woman with an eye patch tied up to a chair, a gag in her mouth. She is glaring at you with so much hate in her eye you're pretty sure she is trying to catch you on fire with her gaze. Behind her you see a small butterfly winged person flitting around.

"Who are you?" you ask. Her glare intensifies as she makes noise against the gag. Oh yeah. You would take off the gag of but moving still hurts and you don't think you could make it across the room. Well you should at least introduce yourself there is no need to be rude. "Hi I'm uh…" Shit. You forgot that you forgot who you are. Who knew keeping track of things that you forgot would be so hard.

Quick think of a name! Well you're undead so you should probably have an undead name or something. "… Necros. Yes that's my name. Yep." You finish smoothly. Totally. She looks unimpressed for reasons you can't fathom. "Um, so I'm going to just lie here for awhile then." You say as you try to will the pain away.

You lay there for a few minutes before a man with a demon mask into walks into the room a bag slung over his back. It takes you a second to recognize him as the Hollow Man. "Hey why is the Boon Giver tide up to the chair?" you ask him. He starts and his head snaps in your direction.

"How are you feeling?" He asks. He ignored your question, rude!

"Really sore, that couch was lumpier then I thought." You respond.

He stares at you for few seconds before continuing, his tone strained "You started screaming and writhing in your sleep, patterns began to burn themselves onto your skin. I could not wake you. You have been non-responsive for three days. I was unsure if I should you move you, so after the first day so I collected Othala to heal you." He said gesturing towards Boon Giver.

Aww he was worried about you, what a great friend! Wait. "That still does not answer why Boon Giver is tied up."

"She was not interested in with coming with me, so I had to use force. She said that she applied her regeneration power to you, but you did not get better. I was unsure if she was lying out of spite, so I kept her hoping she would change her mind." He answers.

Aww he kidnap somebody because he was worried about you, wait that's bad, even if it is kind of sweet. Part of you feels warm and fuzzy due to how much the Hollow Man cares for you. He chose you over the Wyrm and even kidnapped Boon Giver to make her heal you. On the other hand you worried about what extremes he will go to keep you safe. He stole a person and stealing is wrong. You know for a fact that it's only okay to take things from others when you are looting their bodies after you slain them in battle, and only if they are bad guys is it okay to slay them in the first place. You are concerned that he would go as far as to lie to people, which would be terrible!

You feel like you should say something, but at the same time you don't want to seem ungrateful for all the things that he has done. Also you must have worried him a lot when you did not wake up for three days. You force yourself to sit up, pushing yourself past the pain and give him a hug. "It means a lot that you care about me so much. I mean you left the Wyrm to keep being my friend. But well-" You pause as think over your next words "-stealing people seems a bit extreme. I mean it is her choice if she wants to heal me or not. You can't just force innocent people to do what you want. That's something bad guys do."

He responds with a snort "She is hardly innocent. She is a Nazi and works with murderers."

"What is a Nazi?" you ask confused.

"They are a group of racial supremacists that believe that they are the master race and the rest should be exterminated" he explains.

Ugh those people. They are the worst. There always like elves are the best race, we should kill all the humans or undead are abominations of nature we must purge them. Just terrible. "So does she hate elves or something?" you ask scorn in your voice.

The woman looks extremely confused and you can't tell with the Hollow Man what with the mask, but he is doing that thing where he is silently staring at you after you say stuff sometimes. Though you think you might have heard him mutter "Elves?" He then speaks up "No I mean other races of humans." You stare blankly at him, so he continues to explain "It is general based on skin color."

That is the most ridiculous thing you have heard since you have woken up in that coffin. How is that even a thing!? You stare at woman in pity. She was obviously dropped on the head as a child. Maybe you should just put her out down for her own good. "Alright then" you shrug "she is not good person, so good job then." You give him a thumbs up.

That does raise the question of what to do with Boon Giver. You could let her go but then should go back to her evil buddies, so maybe it would be better to just kill her right now and save everyone some headaches later. Or maybe you can try to convince her to stop being evil, you are generally willing give a person a second chance if they really mean it. Also you really have to go to bathroom like really badly.

You quickly decide your desire to poop greatly outweighs the need to decide the Boon Givers fate. You try to struggle to your feet for a couple of seconds, before the Hollowed Man helps pull you up. "Do you know where a bathroom is? I really need to go." you ask

He nods as he helps walk you towards the door. Before you leave you turn back to Boon Giver. You give her your best smile and to reassure her you say "Don't worry I'll be back in a jiffy and then we will decide what to do with you once and for all." For some reason she does not look reassured at all. Strange.

You walk down the hall till you reach the bathroom and the Hallow Man asks "Can you handle going in by yourself?" You nod before you gently push yourself off of him. Your legs are wobbly, but you are used to walking places plastered out of your mind, so you are able to prevent yourself from falling over. You walk in and close the door, but leave it unlocked in case you need help from the Hollow Man.

You stumble over to the toilet and manage to remove your pants after a minute struggle. When you are done relieving yourself, you make your way over to the sink to wash your hands, when you notice and remember the mask you are wearing. It is the same mask that the Hollow Man was wearing when he walked in earlier. You guess he put it on you while you unconscious. You can't think of why he would do that, but he must have had a good reason.

When you look down at your hands you notice white and black lines on them and running up to your arm. Curious, you began to strip off layers of clothes to see where the lines go. It takes you several minutes to take off all of your clothes and you fell over one time taking of your shirt, but you managed to do it.

Your body is covered in unbroken lines of solid black and white, from the soles of your feet to up to your face. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the way they are laid out. They change from looping circles to jagged lines to blocky looking letters that you don't recognize. Whenever you look away from a spot and look back to it later, it seems to have change, but they remain static while you observe them.

However your face has a grinning skull design on it. Unlike the rest of your body it remains unchanging. The left side of the skull is pure black and on the right it is pure white. You are pretty sure the skull is a symbol friendship and brotherhood/sisterhood. As you look at your face you notice that your hair is blood red and your eyes are so bright blue that they seem to be glowing. For some reason you feel an itching sensation at the back of your head, when you look at your hair, you can't but feel as though you lost something that was once precious to you.

Instinctually you know that it is a good idea to pump some of your necrotic energy into your tattoos. As you push energy into the tattoos, they change. The white parts begins to glow, giving off a soft white light, were as the black areas seem to be sucking in light. The tattoos feel as they are more than skin deep now as though they are etched into your very soul. The energy that you have been using seems to flow much more easily throughout your body now and you know that you can pump much power into your abilities now

Right. Enough ogling your sweet tats, time to get down to business. You make your way to the door and are about to open it when you remember that you got no clothes on. You're pretty sure that being nude is a social taboo. Like 82% sure. So you turn around and start putting on your clothes. It is an epic struggle, but you manage it in less than ten minutes and do so without injuring yourself.

As you contemplate your options of what to do with Boon Giver, you realize that you never asked the Hollow Man his opinion on what to do with her. He kidnapped her after all. It would be rude not to consult him on this matter. He also seems to know what is going on more than you do so it's probably a good idea to get options from him.

You stumble into the room that they are waiting for you in. You give your best smile to Boon Giver, but she seems to pale and look unnerved by it. You turn to the Hollow Man and say "So I was thinking on what to do with Boon Giver. I am trying to decide whether I should let her go or just kill her. " Boon Giver makes some muffled noises against her gag and starts to struggle against her bonds. What's her problem?

The Hollow Man ignores her and responds "Well if you are looking for options you could turn her over to the PRT. We could call them give the address of the building and leave. They would come pick her up. Or you could wait for them and go with them back to their base. I do not think you have committed any crimes, so you should not be in trouble with them."

"Um, who are the PRT?" you ask.

"They are the Parahuman Response Team. There job is to police parahuman criminals." He explains.

"Which do you think is the best option?" you inquire.

"Well they all have their pros and cons. I had to fight Victor to get to Othala, so the Empire knows I took her, they however do not know about you. Since a sincerely doubt Kenta would be telling his enemies that I defected from him and you got one over on him, they would assume it was under his orders."

"If you let her go then the Empire will know of your involvement and likely will try to get back at you for reputation's sake at least. If you kill her then she won't be able to tell anyone about you, however if it gets out I was working with you before I kidnapped her, the Empire would defiantly be after your blood."

"If you turn her over to the PRT, she would be able to tell people about you as well, but at least she would be in jail. If you go with the PRT they could protect you from the Empire probably, but I would be unable to go with you."

"Why not?" you ask disappointed that your friend would leave you.

"I am wanted for several crimes myself. They would arrest me" He states.

"You are going stop being an evil now that were friends right? Because I don't know if I could be friends with a bad guy." You ask nervously. You hope he says yes, you don't want to lose your friend.

"If that is what you wish, then I will do so." He says quickly much to your relief.

Right, time to make an attempt to redeem this crazy broad. Usually when you turn people from the path of being a huge asshole you are not this sober. Hopefully that won't affect your performance, but you can't help feeling nervous. You usually look for some sort of mutual interest that you both can agree on when you talk people around to your point of view. If you take away their need to be evil, they usually just drop the whole being a jerk thing.

One of the main reason you hate dealing with racists is that they are so irrational and their beliefs are so ingrained it is hard to convince them they are wrong. The only things harder to talk around are religious fanatics and incarnations of evil, but you have managed those in the past so anything is possible.

Your mind whirs through hundreds of options, the voices chiming in, before you decide on your path. You walk towards Boon Giver and gull off her gag. You look her in the eyes. You can see defiance and anger on the surface, but you can see the fear there to. She knows that you could kill her at any moment. You doubt you would lose a wink of sleep over it. You have killed hundreds, no thousands, people who have rejected your hand of friendship.

"Explain." You demand.

"What?" she looks confused now.

"Explain why you would hurt all those people. I wish to hear your reasons." You elaborate.

She collects herself. You can see that she is mentally preparing her argument, as you prepare to rip them to shreds. "They are plague on society. They are violent savages that revel in their own filth. They drag the rest of us down with them so we have to cleanse them from this city."

"Oh" you respond, you lose control of your emotions and disgust enters your voice "So when you peddle your drugs, steal from the hard working people for their 'protection', and killing those that oppose you, how is it different?"

Where did that come from? How did you know that? You push those thoughts down you have more important things to worry about.

"We only have to do that so we can keep ourselves in position where we can defend ourselves from the filth. They do it out of pleasure and greed, while we do it to protect our own." Boon Giver defends herself.

"I see. I see" your smiling now, it's not a nice smile. "Question. When you finally remove this filth from your sad little world, what do you think will become of your Empire. The people you claim that you're protecting, they don't like you now, why would they like you after?"

"They will see that we were right all along, now that they are safe." She argues.

"Are they? After all you are still around. After all that you have done, they know what evil lurks in your heart. Those that remain will in turn cleanse the earth of you, so they can feel safe. That will be your reward." You finish vindictive glee in your voice.

"You're wrong. We will be heroes." Boon Giver says firmly.

You can see in her eyes that you failed to reach her. It probably did not help that your emotions got the better of you. Yeah, you are far to sober to deal with people like her without wanting to retch. You turn to the Hollow Man "You said that you had a way of contacting this PRT"?

He nods and pulls out a box, before opening it. He pushes some buttons on it, before speaking into it "I have Othala in my custody and wish to turn her over to PRT. I am at 143rd NE and York Ave. in an abandoned office building. I won't be here when you arrive and wish to remain anonymous."

He lowers the box and asks you "Are you staying or leaving?"

You think about it before saying "I think I will stay and wait for them. That way I make sure Boon Giver gets taken by them."

"Very well then. If you need my help for anything, use this phone to contact me." He pulls out a different box. "My number is on it under the name I."

He then speaks into the box again "My friend will be staying to talk with you. Her name is…"

"Necros" you happily supply.

"Necros. Very well. Good bye." he finishes.

You give him a hug before he leaves and he returns it. After he leaves you wait about 10 minutes before you see 3 carriages pull up to the building. You head down to greet them. There are about twenty men and woman standing outside armed with rifles attached to tanks. However there is also a man and woman up front that are unarmed and wearing a different style of clothes. They both seem to be wearing full body armor that conceals the top of their faces. The woman's armor has glowing lines along it, while the man's is plain.

Behind the man is a large rabbit standing on its hind legs. The Kineticist grins and waves at you as he walks over to you. "You must be Necros right? Othala is in there?" You nod and return his smile.

The glowy line lady asks "Do you think you could come to Protectorate Headquarters to answer some question?"

You consider glowy line lady's request. Why would you need to go somewhere to answer questions that you could just answer right her? Is it a trap? You eye the people in front of you, trying to judge their intentions.

They are law enforcement, so they are only as just the law that they enforce. Unfortunately you don't know anything about the laws of this city you don't know if you can trust them or not. Only one of them right here has a soul pact so you think that you can take them, but who knows how many more people with soul pacts are at their base.

No. You will answer their questions here. "Sorry but no, I will however answer your questions here."

Glowy line lady opens her mouth a frown on her face when the Kineticist cuts in "That's fine." a smile on his face. "So can you tell us what you know?"

You nod "Well step one in brewing is malting, this varies on what you are trying to make, but I-"

"I meant with the capture of Othala" he interrupts sounding amused.

"Oh." Whoops "Well I was sick so the Hollow Man stole Boon Giver so that she could heal me. After I got better I asked the Hollow Man to turn her in and we called you."

The Kineticist looks over at glowly line lady and asks "Well that clears things up, don't you think?" She smacks him upside the head before turning back to you.

"Can you describe this Hollow Man for us?" She asks you.

"He is my friend!" you say happily "Also he was haunted by a baku, but I fixed that for him."

She pauses "Can you describe what he looks like?" The Kineticist seems to be holding back laughter.

Wait they wanted to capture him, didn't they? "Nope!" you chirp.

She looks surprised "Why not?"

"Reasons." You side stepped that issue like a pro.

Her face is buried inside her hands and you hear a groan coming from her. The Kineticist speaks up his shaking with laughter "Well okay then. So Necros is your cape name then."

"I don't have cape." You point out. "Also why would you name a cape? That seems weird. You are kind of silly, you know that?" You suspect this man is not all there in the head, judging by his giggle fit.

He shakes his head before asking you "Does name Taylor Hebert mean anything to you?"

You have an itch at the back your head again, but the name itself does not really ring any bells "No, I don't think so. Who is he?"

" **She** is a girl that missing in five days ago, about your age and height" He seems to be trying to hint at something, but you are not sure what.

"Well I hope you find her. This city is dangerous. It has angry dragon men in it." You hope nothing happened to her. Her parents must be worried sick about her.

He just stares at you for a few seconds before shrugging and turning to glowy line lady "Any other questions?"

She purses her lips and gives you critical look before whispering to the Kineticist. They mutter back and forth to each other, they seem to be arguing, before turning back to you. "Look if you need help, you can come back to our base. We won't make you do anything you are comfortable with."

Didn't you just tell them that you didn't want to go? You are getting a little irritated though that be the sobriety talking. Being sober is the worst and you don't think you can take much longer. The longer you stay dry the more temper seems to be increasing. You are worried if you wait long enough you might explode. Maybe these guys know where you can get a drink. "Do you know where a bar is?"

The Kinetics seems startled by your question before asking "Aren't you too young to drink?"

"How can one be too young to drink, that is most absurd thing I ever heard." you scoff.

"It's kind of the law. You need identification to prove you are the age of 21 to able to drink" he says in a bemused voice.

That is most evil, vile, monstrous thing you have ever heard in your life. It's clear to you that the lord of this city is gone mad with power and seeks to spread despair across the land. You are done with these people. Anyone who would support his reign obviously is not in favor of justice. You turn and stalk off.

They call out to you and start to chase after you. Your desire to get away from them causes your energy to build up once more. When you release it this time your body vanishes. With a grin you walk off as they try to find you. After ten minutes you dismiss your invisibility and go searching for a bar on your own.

Actually do you have any money? You check your pockets and find a leather pouch. You go through it find a bunch useless pieces of paper and some plastic squares. One of the squares has a picture of a girl. The name Taylor Hebert is on it with some of her personal information as well. You have no idea why you would have this. You toss all of that junk to the ground. In one of the side pockets you finally find some copper and silver pieces.

After about half an hour later you finally come across a building that advertises that it sells alcohol inside. You praise Cayden Cailean for guiding your path and then enter the bar. There are few other people in the bar nursing their drinks. You walk over to the bartender and put a 5 silver piece on the counter. "Beer, please and keep them coming."

The bartender stares at you for a second, a bunch of emotions cross his face rapidly, before he sighs and nods. He grabs a glass and fills at the tap before heading back over to you. He puts the glass on the counter in front of you. You grin and pick it up bringing it your lips. This is the moment you have been waiting for. Finally you shall taste this amber liquid of bliss. As it about to pass through your lips, the door slams open. A man in red and green points his pistol at you and opens fire on you. He misses, but manages to hit the glass in your hand. You hear a shriek of rage that can only be described as monstrous.

You will destroy him Calm nothing will stop your wrath as you flay him alive. You stand up and Calm okay maybe your overreacting, there is plenty more beer that you can drink here. Sure he ruined some beer, but that was not his intention, he was just trying to kill you. You can forgive him for his mistake, but you should scold him for his carelessness.

Breathe in and breathe out. You then notice that he has still been shooting at you for the past ten seconds and you have been absently mindedly dodging his shots. He has hit several more bottles of alcohol along the wall and you feel a spike of rage go through your body. Also it looks like the bartender is dead. Green-red man's clip runs out and he turns around going back through the door he came through.

Yeah there is no way he is getting away with ruining all of that alcohol. You were willing to forgive the one mistake but this is asking too much even for you. Destruction of holy objects should always be punished. Also killing the bartender was bad to. You head outside to kick his ass when you notice there are ten more people in red and green waiting for you outside. They all have guns and open fire on you barely manage to evade all of the bullets before leaping back through the door.

Okay you are a little outnumbered here. Maybe if you wait in here you can bottle neck them and take them out as they try to make their way in. As you thinking through your strategy you see a bottle with a piece of burning clothe sail in through the door and smash into the floor. Okay now the bar is on fire. Shit. The other patrons are yelling and beginning to panic.

You need to get these people out of here and teach these heretics a lesson that they will never forget. To assault on Cayden Cailean's domain is unacceptable and your punishment shall be harsh. No one messes with your old drinking buddy's followers. A plan rapidly forms in your head.

You consider grabbing some booze but the fire has spread quickly due to all the spilled alcohol. The bottles of alcohol are exploding from the heat of the fire, pieces of glass shrapnel flying in every direction. You manage to avoid the shrapnel but some of the others are not so lucky. You give one last mournful look towards the remaining bottles before deciding better safe than sorry.

You summon the spirit of the bar to exact its vengeance upon those that would dare harm it. It looks like humanoid figure of slowly melting glass. "Break their arms and legs, but don't kill them. Don't let any of them escape." You say as you point a savage grin on your face.

You will leave them alive that way that they can be lesson to all others that decide to attack a bar and destroy alcohol. Let it be known that your wrath shall be turned on those that dare to harm a single drop of booze. The bar spirit appears in the material plane and lets a howl of rage as it charges those that dare to harm its domain. You then yell out to patrons "I am going to make two of you invisible at a time. I need you to run as quickly as you can away from the battle."

You rapidly cast invisibility on two of the other patrons. They book it out the door and when you see them turn around the corner, you drop the spell. You repeat the process two more times, before throwing invisibility over yourself and make your way over to the fight. Most of the infidels are lying on the ground on screaming in pain. You see one of them trying to get away only to be prevented when the bar spirit throws one his other compatriots at him, taking them both down.

You examine the downed heretics. All of them are still alive. They are all writhing on the ground no doubt due to their limbs being bent into unnatural angles. You walk over to the man that killed the bar keeper, he deserves an extra punishment. You search through his pockets and pull out a knife. You then remove the fingers from his hand that he committed his sins with. You then cauterize his wounds with lightning.

You drop your invisibility and address the wounded men on the ground "This is your punishment for your crimes of destroying alcohol, a bar, and killing an innocent bar keeper. Spread word that this is the fate of all who dare to commit such heresies. Let the Wyrm know that I am coming for him and the rest of his organization. Remember that this is me being merciful, next time I may not be. "

You let the spirit finish breaking the limbs of the remaining heretics, before dismissing it. You leave heading deeper into the city. You hear the sounds of sirens behind you. You have plans to make to destroy the Wyrm and clean up the rest of this city. Between these heretics and those insane racists, it looks like you have a lot of work ahead of you.

* * *

Emily Piggot felt a headache coming on as Assault and Battery came in to give their report, their faces looking grim. This week had just been, ugh, just fuck this week. First there was Hebert and Hess debacle. She knew if that ever got out to the media it would be a PR disaster, she would no doubt she would be on the chopping block. 'Then there was Armsmaster.' she thought with a grimace. His breakdown and self mutilations could not have come at a worse time. The man used to be dependable and hard working, maybe not the best leader, but he always took his job seriously.

Unfortunately it took them two days to realize that something was wrong. He had requested the next four of his days off, so he could devote his time to tinkering. He stated that he was working on some delicate tinker tech and he needed to be not disturbed. She had trusted Armsmaster on this, since he had asked for time to work before and it had never been a problem then. Then the ABB and E88 suddenly where at all out war with each other, so they had need to cut Armsmaster's time short.

He had sealed himself in his lab and would not come out, so they had to force their way in. The man had removed the top of his own skull and was grafting who knows what to his brain. He already attached six tentacle-like arms to his body, fusing them into his spine, which he had been using to do said brain surgery. Miss Militia had been able to convince him to stop what he was doing, while they called in Panacea in to reattach the top his head, despite his insistence he could do it himself.

When Panacea tried to sedate she found that she could not, since Armsmaster decided it was a good idea to inject self-replicating nanites into his blood stream. So they had to throw him into quarantine while Dragon is currently assessing the danger of the nanites. Dragon had been visibly disturbed by what Armsmaster had done and seemed driven to undo the damage that he did to himself.

Emily sighed and looked up at Assault and Battery before speaking "Well let's hear it."

Battery spoke "We were on patrol when PHQ told us that we would be picking up Othala and to meet up with the PRT escort. We were informed it was from an anonymous caller and that a girl named Necros would be waiting for use there to turn over Othala. When I asked if she was willing to comeback with us she said no, but she was willing to answer our questions."

Assault chimed in "We were pretty sure that Necros was Taylor Hebert, but well, we couldn't prove it was her and we have no justification to take Necros in she did not want to go back with us, so we could not force the issue. So I figured I would question her figure out what happened and hopefully convince her to comeback with use."

"She was missing a few cards from a deck if you know what I mean, so most of the answers she gave were mostly rambling nonsense. The only thing that we learned from her was that she had gotten sick and another parahuman nabbed Othala to heal her."

"I hinted pretty heavily that we knew who she was, but she claimed not to know who Taylor Hebert was. We tried to invite her back to base again, when she decided to ask if we knew where a bar was so she could get a drink."

Emily had honestly not been expecting that. Her voice came at disbelievingly "A minor asked law enforcement were she could acquire alcohol."

"Yeah" Assault responded "When I told her she could not drink till she was 21, she reacted badly and she vanished using some sort of Mover or Stanger power."

Battery "We looked around for her while the PRT troopers secured Othala, but she was nowhere to be found. When we talked to Othala it turned out that Oni Lee was the one who kidnapped her and was working with Necros."

Emily's eyebrows rose at that. "What in the world was Taylor Hebert doing with Oni Lee?"

Battery frowned "Othala did not know, but apparently Oni Lee was taking orders from Necros. Othala said Necros was talking about killing her before Oni Lee suggested calling the PRT, which she apparently never heard of."

"You are telling me that Oni Lee had to convince the girl not to kill, Oni Lee who several counts of murder under his belt." Emily asked incredulously.

"Yeah. Also according to Othala at one point she was rambling about elves, she referred to Oni Lee as the Hollow Man and Othala as Boon Giver when talking to us, and had a strange echoing voice that sounds like multiple people talking. Who does that remind you of?" Assault asked.

'Please for the love of god tell me we don't have the fairy queen 2.0 running through my city.' thought Emily.

Assault laughed without humor at the expression on her face, before saying "Oh it gets even better. So we called in Velocity to escort the convoy back while we continued our search for Necros, when we get another call. Apparently the ABB got in fire fight at a bar nearby with an unknown parahuman, which turned out to be Necros."

"According to one of the people at the bar she demanded alcohol for three nickels and two dimes, the bartender went along with it because he was not suicidal enough to deny a clearly unstable parahuman what they wanted. Then the ABB attacked the bar trying to kill her. She manages to dodge all the bullets fired at her without even looking in the direction of the gun fire. One of the bullets kills the bartender. Then the ABB set the bar on fire to drive her out into the open."

"She then creates some sort of projection to attack the ABB outside the bar and then was able to make the people in the bar invisible so they get away from the fire fight. The caller was one of the people that managed to get way thanks to Necros."

"When we arrived we found ten ABB on the ground with their arms and legs twisted in all sorts of directions and one of them had all of the fingers on his right hand cut off. She told them before she left, that was her being merciful and she was coming for the rest of them."

Emily sighed "Well now we have a reason to bring her in. That level of force is completely unacceptable. Did the ABB that we picked up at least say why they attacked Necros?"

Battery nodded "Apparently Lung put two hundred thousand dollar hit on her three days ago. Most them didn't know why, but one them said he heard that she had mastered Oni Lee."

Emily gritted her teeth and hissed "So what you are telling me is that Hebert master Oni Lee and had him kidnap Othala, causing the ABB and E88 to go into an all out gang war." She then took a few seconds to compose herself before speaking "Is there anything else to report?"

"I don't believe so." responded Battery.

"Very well I expect a written report by the end. Dismissed" order Emily. After they left she buried her face in her hands and groaned. She should have thrown Shadow Stalker in juvie from the get go.

* * *

Right what were you doing again? You ponder upon this for several minutes, before you remember you are trying to clean this town up of all its evil organizations. Which it has a lot of apparently. This city is huge as its building are tall. Also you are totally lost again. Damn labyrinth of sobriety. Acquiring a map would also help a lot to help navigate this hell city. Unfortunately you would have to find a map shop and you need a map to find one. You just know that various gods of irony are mocking you.

You know that there are at least two groups ruining this city: the super racists and the teetotaling heretics. Who knows what else could be in this city. You bet some mad man is hiding in the shadows, using everyone around him as puppets to take over the city and its underworld. You usually accidently stumble upon their plans or they decide you are too dangerous to live, so you don't really have to go looking for them.

There are probably also some end of the world cultists somewhere around here to. Those guys are everywhere and no matter how much you kill them they keep springing up. Always going around sacrificing virgins, which is a tragedy since they never got to experience the bliss that is sex. Really why do so many people worship world eating abomination that cause nothing but madness and despair. Such a huge pain the ass.

Then there are the slavers. How you hate those raping scum. If there is one thing you hate most in the world it is a rapist. You always enjoy watching their death throes as they scream for the sweet release of death.

Well the Hollow Man knows the teetotaler dragon bastard. He said he would stop being a bad guy now, so you can probably count on him to give you help dealing with him. You look at the talky box that he gave you earlier. You have no idea how to use this. You probably should have said something earlier, but oh well.

You should also probably get off the street what with the Wyrm's minions looking for you. Well you know that this city has abandoned buildings so you should probably find one of those to hide out in before sunset. You will also need a disguise of some sort if you want to walk around. As your thinking about how to go about hiding your amazing but striking features, you feel your necrotic energies building up again.

When you release it this time your body has changed appearance. You walk over to one of the windows on the street and look at your reflection. You appear to be a woman in her mid to late thirties with long dark brown curly hair. You feel longing and nostalgia when you look at your reflection. You stare at for few more minutes before ripping your gaze from it. Time to get back to work.

You pull the talky box out of your pocket and began to fiddle with it. You wonder what kinds of enchantments were placed on it so that it could speak at such long distances. Probably some variation of whispering wind, no doubt, but you don't see any astral signature on it so you are not sure.

You flip it open and see several buttons on it most contain numbers and letters, but a few have symbols you don't recognize. You see a circle with four arrows surrounding it, pointing north, east, west, and south. There is also a green and red button. There is also a painting on the top half with words on it, while you know what the words mean they lack context so you are unsure of their purpose.

Hmmm maybe it is based on some sort of coordinate system? But you would need a map to figure out what the local coordinates are, so you hope not. You push some of the number buttons to see what happens. The device makes a beeping sound and the painting on top changes. It now displays the numbers that you pushed. After awhile the painting returns to its default image, hmm looks like you have to push one of the other buttons to input the numbers.

You push a bunch of number buttons at random and then hit the red button, which simple brings you back to beginning. Could they make this anymore complicated! You repeat what you did with the green button this time you hear a voice come out of the box. You bring it up to your ear to listen you hear a woman's voice speak "The number or code you have dialed is incorrect. Please dial again." Son of a whore!

"How do I use this thing" you ask the lady speaking to you. But she does not respond and the box makes buzzing sounds in your ear. You glare at this infernal contraption, part of you wants to smash, but the more sensible part knows you will never find the Hollow Man without it. Gritting your teeth you decide to push the big circle. The painting changes again this time displaying a list under the header that says contacts. One of them looks like it contains your contacts and it has number two by it. So you push the number two button.

The painting changes to a different list. If you remember right the Hollow Man said he would be under I. You move down the list by pushing south a bunch of times until you come across I. You push the green button and your box starts making noises for a few seconds, before you hear the Hollow Man speak his tone worried "Necros do you need assistance?" Aha! You figured it out, you are genius and no stupid box will ever out smart you!

"Yes! I am lost and need to find the Wyrm to stop his reign of evil!" you shout into the box since you are not sure how loud you need to be.

"How did you get lost? Did you not go back with the Protectorate Headquarters for their protection?" he asked confused.

"Never! They said I was not allowed to drink alcohol! The fiends!" you exclaim.

You hear a choking noise come from the box. "Look Lung is looking for you and won't rest till you are dead. You can't just go wandering around. What street are you on I will come pick you up." he says his voice sounded strained.

You look around for a street sign and read it off to him "132nd Ave SW and Pine Way."

"I will be there in ten minutes, keep the line open and let me know if there is any trouble." He says quickly.

You stand there humming to yourself as you wait. After a little while you see the Hollow Man moving down the street quickly, looking around for you. He looks at you a few times but is ignoring you for some reason. Oh wait! You threw up that illusion earlier, he can't recognize you. You wave at him and yell out "Over here Hollow Man." He pauses before walking briskly over to you.

"Well at least you are disguised." He says his voice filled with relief. "I was worried that you would have run into some of Lung's men."

"Oh I already did, but I kicked their ass!" You say pumping your fist.

He freezes for a second before exhaling "It is good you are not injured. You are uninjured correct?" You nod happily. "Good. So you said that you wanted help taking down the ABB."

You put on your serious face before nodding again "They are out of control and must be stopped. I plan on stopping all of the wrongs in this city, but he is trying to kill me so I figured I should probably start with the Wyrm. But I needed to do some planning first so I thought that talking to you first would be smart."

"What is it you need to know?" asks the Hollow Man

You consider his question for few seconds "I need to know where all those villainous organizations are more or less based and any useful information you can give me about them. Things like numbers, how well armed they are, weaknesses that can be exploited and other things like that. Also I keep getting lost, like all the time in this maze of a city, so a map would be awesome."

He nods as he motions for you to follow him. "The group I know most about is the ABB. It is a pan-Asian gang that is led by Lung. I was the only other parahuman in the gang beside him so he is the only major threat we would need to worry about. If you wish to defeat him in a fight you need to do so quickly. He gets more powerful the longer the fight goes on, to the point that he is undefeatable."

You nod. You will have to just get him in his sleep then. The Hollow Man might know where he rests if the Wyrm did not think to change his resting spot, but he probably did.

"The gang itself is made up of about 80 to 100 men and woman. They general don't have more than small arms fire with knifes or clubs. Honestly they are not much a threat as long as you are careful." he continues. "When we get the map I can mark several locations that are being used the ABB if you wish to hit them."

The Wyrm is a dragon and there for very protective of his hoard. If you were to steal from him repeatedly he would be enraged and would start to make mistakes in his fury. You have no doubt that could you this to make him come out into the open and lay down an ambush.

"The next largest organization is the Empire Eighty Eight. They are a group of neo-Nazis that have a very large number of parahumans. I believe their current number is 15 parahumans with about 200 normal members. I would strongly suggest not fighting them openly or else you could easily be overwhelmed by their numbers. Their normal members are no better armed than those in the ABB. The main reason the Empire has not taken over the city is because Lung could fight of the entire group by himself if he desired to."

Yeah you are defiantly going to have ambush the Wyrm if you are going to beat him. You doubt that you could take 15 soul-bound yourself at the same time let alone 200 armed men. Dragons are ridiculous.

"I only know the general territory they occupy. But I would have to scout out their area to find their safe houses for you. They are currently at open war with the ABB due to the fact I took Othala. Since they are much more active right now, if we are careful we could ambush some of their parahumans will they moving about in the open."

While you consider his words your stomach rumbles loudly. When was the last time you ate? The Hollow Man reaches into his backpack and pulls out a sandwich and hands it you. You give him a beaming smile and scarf down the sandwich. When you are done eating it he hands you another. The Hollow Man is the best! While you are eating you walk in silence. The Hollow Man leads you into a book shop and goes over to the section that contains maps.

He examines them for a few minutes before picking one out and heading over to the merchant. He hands over some of that green paper you found in your pouch earlier. She then hands him back different paper and coins. Wait is that paper money!? If you could feel shame you would probably be embarrassed right now.

After you leave the store he starts talking again "The only other large gang is the Merchants. They have less territory, but more members since they are made up of the dregs of society. They often kidnap homeless people and get them addicted to drugs to pad their numbers. They only have three parahumans and about three hundred normal members. However most of their members lack any kind of firearm and their minds ruined by the drug they intake. There are a few other groups, but for the most part are so smalltime they frankly are not worth the effort to track down."

Wow the local merchant's guild has gone mad with power just like every group in this city. The Hollow Man unfolds the map and pulls out a marker. He begins to draw on it "This is ABB territory and their safe houses. Here is E88 territory and finally this is Merchant territory."

You think you will let the ABB and E88 duke it out. Now that the E88 lacks their healer, when the Wyrm injures their members they will be down for the count for a long while. You will swoop in and mop up the rest after the fighting is over.

While you wait for the fighting to be settled you'll go after the Merchants. You exam the map to help you come up with a plan of attack against the Merchants. Their territory is appears to be small pockets across the city. So that rules out a single assault, it would be much easier they had one big base.

You suppose you could attack their supply houses and loot them to the bedrock. It weakens them and strengthens you. The only problem is that many of the members of the Merchants have been forced into it. You don't mind hurting bad guys, but hurting the downtrodden leaves a sick feeling in your gut. You much rather just find the assholes in charge and exterminate them. Finding them seems like it would be much harder though.

"I think I will start with the Merchants. Tell me everything you know about them." You say.

The Hollow Man considers your request for several seconds before answering "The leader of the Merchants is Skidmark. He can create a field around him accelerates and decelerates object within it."

"The other two parahumans under him are Squealer and Mush. Squealer is a tinker that focuses on making various forms of transport. Mush can take debris and form a sort of armor out of it. None of them would be particular hard to defeat in a fight. Finding them however is much more difficult."

Those are all terrible names. You pretty sure Skittle's power is useless against your lightning so you are not worried about him. "What kind of things does Squealie make exactly?" you ask.

"Armored cars with mounted weapons, the weapons vary greatly, but if you catch them indoors she can't use most of her arsenal." He responds.

You suddenly yawn loudly. You are feeling pretty drained now that you think about it. You didn't really get a good night sleep and you have had a busy day. "Hey do you think we could find a place to sleep?"

He nods and motions for you to follow him. "I did not get much sleep the last few days, so I had already scouted out a building earlier today for rest." As you walk through the city you continue to think through your plans.

The best strategy it seems is to fight them in their bases then out on the streets. Being indoors would negate their numbers and Squawker's stuff. You can scout for supply houses and hope you find Skedaddle. Another option is that you can try to infiltrate their organizations using your illusion magic and then ambushing when you get the leaders all together.

Another question is whether you want the Hollow Man there or not. So far the E88 don't know you are working together, if they find out they no doubt will focus on you instead of the Wyrm.

You walk up to a side door of a rundown building. The Hollow Man turns to ash and after half a minute it pops open. He leads you to a room with some sleeping bags and food. You eat a little before turning in.

* * *

Taylor woke with a start. 'Holy shit I almost killed somebody today.' She had barely managed to hold back the maelstrom of voices earlier. It had taken a herculean effort to merely disfigure her enemies oppose to killing them. She did not know if she could keep holding them back. Maybe the rat would have some suggestions.

She sits up and looked around. She appeared to be in the same room as last time when she met Mr. Nibbles. However that rat bastard was not here like he said he would be. Scowling Taylor looked around the room looking for any sign of him and found nothing. 'Should I wait or go looking for him' she wondered. She only had a limited amount of time if last time was indication.

To be honest she really did not want to sit around waiting for him. She eyed the archway that led into a pitch black abyss. Sighing Taylor walked through the archway. All directions were a solid wall of darkness. The sound of singing came from several directions. Three of the voices are louder than the rest. Taylor didn't understand the words, but the meanings of the songs were clear to her.

The first song is ever changing. It has no clear pattern or meaning to it. One moment it is about battle then cooking to horticulture. When she focused on it she felt dizzy. The second song is about balance and harmony. When she focused on this song it washes all of her fears and doubts away. The third song is of darkness and despair. When Taylor focuses on it fills her with dread.

The other two songs make her uneasy listening to them and having her worries washed away was too much temptation to ignore. The worry of that in her madness killing someone and the fear of what her Dad must be going through no longer weighed down on her. She moved towards the sound, embracing the feeling of calm.

After what seemed like an eternity and seconds she saw a light ahead. As she got closer she saw that it was another archway. Inside appeared to be a library. The shelves of books seemed to go on forever and she could not see the tops of the shelves or the ceiling.

In the center of the room appeared to be a young red haired girl with a skull tattoo on her face sitting at a desk. She was singing the same song that drew Taylor to her, as she scribbled on pieces of paper. She did not seem to notice as Taylor walked towards. As Taylor got closer she cleared her throat "Hello."

The girl looked up and stopped singing. She cocked her head to side as she looked at Taylor. "Hello. Who are you? I am Rana."

"I'm Taylor. I was trying to find Mr. Nibbles, but I have no idea how to find anything out there." Taylor said waving her hand towards the archway.

Rana shrugged "I have not seen him in a longtime. I can't really say how long due to how time flows here, but I think a century. He is probably busy making sure some of the more dangerous denizens are not causing trouble. If they got out, well let's just say it would be really bad. "

'How big is this place?' thought Taylor. "Maybe you could answer some of my questions, since Mr. Nibbles can't?"

She gives you a smile that would have been adorable if it was not for the tattoo on her face. "Sure! Haven't talked to anybody in awhile, been busy with work."

"What is this place?" asked Taylor.

"Well this is my soul. Each archway leads to another denizens area." Rana answered.

Taylor paused before considering her next question "Do you know any way to help me remain calm when I am wake. I keep almost killing people."

Rana looked confused "Wait your attacking innocent people. That's abnormal. Maybe one the more evil souls have gotten loose."

"Well no, they were criminals that hurt people" Taylor answered.

If anything Rana looked even more confused "What does it matter if you killed them then?"

It disturbed Taylor greatly to hear things like that coming out of what looked like a ten year olds mouth. "If I go around killing people then I am just as bad as they are." She responded.

"I don't follow. It's really simple, if they are killing innocent people, you kill them to make them stop. I fail to see how their killing innocent people, is the same as when you are killing an evil person." She says.

Taylor glared "I don't agree. Look do you have a way of helping me stay calm or not."

Rana frowned at her "Rude. The art of centering could help you stay calm. It would not be able to override extremely powerful emotions, but it would lessen them to the point where you have better control."

Taylor paused "What is centering and how long would that take to learn?"

"Centering is when you perform a sort of ritual when casting. Things like chanting, singing, dancing or many other similar things are some common examples. It causes you to focus more on the magic and as a side effect centers your emotional state. I personally use singing to do my centering. The time it takes to learn really depends on your grasp on magical theory. Normally it would take about a month or less. However since our souls are merged it should be much more expedient." She replied.

"Is this going to hurt a lot and transform my body even more?" Taylor asked suspiciously.

"No it shouldn't do either of those things. The process would take a few minutes at most."

Taylor nodded her head and said "Go ahead and do it then."

Rana starts singing again and the tattoos on her arms began to writhe and then peeled themselves from her skin. The black and white tendrils latched on to Taylor and connected with her tattoos. Rana's tattoos pulsed sending energy into Taylor. Months of information and memories were being pumped into Taylor. The sensation was overwhelming. Taylor struggled to remember which were memories were hers and which ones were Rans's. They blended seamless together to the point that they both feel like they had actually had happened to her.

The tendrils retracted and fused back into Rana's skin and she went back to drawing diagrams. Taylor was gasping heavily, her heart beating quickly. After a minute her breathing slowed as she calmed down. Rana said "Well give it go, you should be able to do it now."

Taylor dug through her memories on centering before opening her mouth to sing. As she sang she felt her warmth fill her body as once again all her fears and worries seem to melt away from her. Grinning Taylor said "Thanks this should help a lot. Actually is there anything else you could teach me? I got a lot of people after me and any help would be great."

Rana responded not looking up from her work "Sure, but unfortunately not right now. You see the process that speeds this up causes a strain on your soul. It won't cause any damage as long as we wait for it to recover, but if we do things too fast we could cause some serious harm. Come back and visit later and we can see how much more I can add on."

"So what is it you doing anyway?" Taylor asked curiously.

Rana looked up her eyes sparkling "I am crafting a new spell. It's going to be awesome when I get it done, but right now I have hit a snag."

"Oh what's the problem?" asked Taylor.

"Well the spell is supposed to transform the target's eyeballs into flesh eating creatures that burrows into the targets brain and kills him. Unfortunately it only makes their eye balls explode, which means I can't use some of the cool quips I came up with. I was totally going to go 'looks you should have kept a better eye out' and then Garth would say 'I **see** what you did there' and then we would high five. I have a lot less magic intense ways to blind someone so the spell is currently useless" She responds with a frown.

'Holy fucking shit. She is a psycho.' Taylor stares at her with mouth hanging open lost for words.

Rana perks up suddenly "Hey do you think you would be willing to help me work out the kinks?"

"NO! I mean, I uh don't know enough about magic to uh contribute to your project." Taylor said quickly forcing a smile on her face. 'Don't piss of the little devil girl.'

She looks down disappointment on her face "Well okay then is there anything else you need because I want to figure this spell out."

Against her better judgment Taylor asked "Do you think you can answer some question I am still pretty confused about what's going on around here?"

"Sure. But it looks you're going to wake up soon we are going to have to make this a quickie." Rana said waggling eyebrows out Taylor, causing her to blush and shift uncomfortably as apparently a ten year old was hitting on her.

Ignoring the way Rana's eyes traveled up and down her body Taylor considered her questions quickly. "Mr. Nibbles said something about multi-dimensional magic causing our souls to merge, how did I end up getting targeted?"

Rana hummed before answering "It's hard to say why an individual gets chosen to be next Avatar of Varies. The spell itself seems to choose its end point after bouncing around the multiverse for awhile. Usually when we show up it is due to the world being close to some sort of extinction event or great cataclysmic change. We are always involved in these events is some way to help prevent disaster. The person from what I can tell just happens to be near where ever the Avatar is needed."

"So you are saying that have to help save the world? How in the world am I going to do that, I can barley take care of myself like this, let alone go around saving people!" Taylor said hysteria entering her voice

"Meh, it will work out fine, it always does." replied Rana unconcerned.

Taylor let out a sigh of frustration before asking "Is there any way to make my awake self act more like me and filter out all the input from the others."

Rana's brow furrowed as she pondered the question "Well there are a couple of things you could do, but neither would particular easy to pull off. The first method to remember who you are is to actual want to remember who you are. If a memory is unpleasant you will just kind of ignore it and can only get it back if you really want it back"

Taylor blinked "Wait you are saying the reason I don't remember anything is because I don't want to. Why would I want to forget my Dad? That is ridiculous."

Rana shrugged "How would I know? I am not you. Look when your awake self has been doing her thing, she has been more or less happy right? Remembering whatever it is your forgetting would cause her stress and make her unhappy so she is not going to try."

Rana continued "Anyway the other way I would normally suggest to be more like yourself is to get drunk as a skunk. Wait do skunks get drunk? Never mind, just get drunk."

Tears began to well at Rana's eyes as she spoke "Unfortunately the last host got cursed by one of his enemies. To the point where reality will engineer situations so that no matter what you will not get your hands on alcohol."

Taylor buried her head in her hands before speaking in a muffled voice "What is with the obsession with alcohol anyway?"

Rana looked scandalized "What!? Alcohol is the greatest thing to ever been invented in the history of the multiverse. It solves all of lifes problems, no matter how great. I will not hear you speak anything against it."

Taylor face still in her hands sighed before asking "Why would it help me be more like myself?"

"Well we have a fae in us that feeds off alcohol. We could sustain ourselves forever off alcohol. When we get sober the less rational we get and our mind is only really focused when were drunk. Oh whatever you do not drink human blood. You will be addicted to it and it will replace your desire for alcohol with human blood." Rana explained.

Rana began to rub her hand on Taylor's thigh, licking her lips she looked Taylor in the eyes and purred "So about that quickie."

Taylor felt herself waking up at that moment 'Oh thank god.'


	3. Day 6

You wake up feeling recharged and ready to face the day unlike last time. Mr. Sleeping Bag is much more trustworthy then that son of whore Mr. Couch. You also feel as though you just escaped an extremely dangerous situation, but you are unsure why. You sit up and clean yourself off with a quick cleaning spell. Before making your way over to food and chowing down.

The Hollow Man enters the room after a couple of minutes and sits down next to you and starts to eat as well. "I see that your sleep was much less eventful this time." he notes dryly. After a few minutes of silence he asks "So what are your plans for today?"

"Well I was thinking I could infiltrate the Merchants, so that I could find the leaders together at the same time and take them out in one fell swoop." you say. "I can disguise myself easily so it should not be too hard to for me to sneak in."

"That sounds incredibly dangerous and you are not … the most subtle person. You also seem to be missing basic pieces of information that most people would know quite often." He says sounding displeased.

You puff up with indignation "I can be plenty subtle and I know lots of stuff, thank you very much."

"Oh" he says "what city are we in right now?" You pause, eyes flashing around the room looking for a clue. He sighs "Do you see my point, if someone brings up something that you should know, but don't, people will be suspicious."

"I can handle it" you insist "You said they were all addicts, right? So if I come off as weird then they won't think anything of it." He does not look convinced. "If I get in trouble I can turn invisible and leave." He does not look happy but he nods.

"I was also thinking that if you attack some their supply houses on your own they may try to organize a rally or something to respond to you and I could ambush them." you continue.

"While I could do that easily, it would look odd if I resurfaced to attack the Merchants while the ABB and E88 are at open war with each other. Since you would also be attacking the Merchants, the E88 could figure out the connection between us." he responds. "Then you would have the ABB, the E88, and the Merchants after you. I feel that we should be more subtle with our connection with each other for your safety"

While it's great all the Hollow Man is worried about your safety, he seems to be going overboard, which is kind of annoying. You have been fighting evil for a longtime and you know what you are doing. Even if all the bad guys working against you are pretty sure that you can handle the danger. However the Hollow man is your friend and ignoring him would be wrong after all the help he has given you. You are pretty sure you can fool the Merchants to get enough information, but the Hollow Man says he should be used more subtly when used for your crusade. "If you were to attack the E88 they would assume you are still with the Wyrm, correct?" He nods his head.

You continue "So if you make sure that the conflict between the two stays heated then they won't be paying attention to me. If you manage to weaken the Empire as well, that's just an added bonus. While you do that I will start to try to find the locations of the Merchant leaders using my illusions."

The Hollow Man spoke up "Do you know what the Merchants look like?" When you shake your head he continues "They were clothing with these symbols on them." He draws out a $ symbol for you.

You blink in confusion "Wait if they all are openly wearing their gang sign, then how of the guards not caught them all yet."

"Being in a gang is not against the law. They can only arrest them if they can prove that the individual has committed a crime." explains the Hollow Man.

Wait it is not against the law to join an evil organization. This city has the weirdest laws you have ever heard of. First their insane ban on alcohol and then this. You really need to get rid of the people in charge of this place, because they are insane, evil, or idiots, maybe all of the above.

You spend the next few minutes crafting a disguise with the Hollow Man critiquing it. You examine yourself in a mirror that he supplied you. You now have blond greasy hair, your skin is pale and sickly, your teeth rotted, marks running up and down your arm, and your eyes blood shot. You are in a filthy green hoodie with $ symbols on it.

You also need to get the leaders out in the open together "Do you have any ideas how I can rile up their leadership, so I can drive them out into the open?" you ask the Hollow Man.

"How far can your projection be from you?" he responds.

Projections? You think about it for a second before you realize he means your spirit friends. "Generally a few hundred meters. Why?"

"If they are strong enough to fight Lung briefly then they should be more than enough to smash a Merchant drug house. If you destroy several of them without putting yourself in harm's way and then when you impersonate a Merchant there is a good chance you will find a meeting lead by Skidmark." he explains.

He then pulls out your map and a marker. He then marks the map with large circles. "I believe there are a drug houses somewhere in these general areas. The houses on the outskirts of Merchant territory will have fewer guards, but also carry much less valuable supplies. The deeper in you go the more men there will be and you will rile them up faster."

"I think I will hit the houses on the outskirts first and then make my way deeper in slowly." You tell the Hollow Man.

"You don't have to do this all in one day you know" he points out.

"I rather get it done quickly so that they stop hurting people." you respond.

"Wait here I will be back shortly" He says before standing up walking out of the room, he returns with a backpack. He pulls out some black bulky clothing. "Since you can disguise what you are wearing you will be able to wear this without being noticed. It should stop small arms fire if you get hit in the chest, but you should still avoid being hit whenever possible." He then puts some food and your map in the backpack.

He leaves the room so that you can get dressed. The clothing is surprisingly heavy. You can feel metal plates in the chest area as you put it on. After you get dressed you grab your backpack and head outside to meet the Hollow Man. "Remember if you ever in need of help just call me and I will come quickly as I can." You give him a hug and then head out. Time to show the Merchants that their reign of terror is over.

You throw up your planned illusion and make yourself invisible before you leave the building. You pull out your map and make your way over to Merchant territory. Once you reach the area where the drug house should be near, you walk around looking for any sign of the gang. After a few minutes you spot someone that you believe to be Merchant standing in front of a rundown building.

You move into a nearby alleyway and sing softly as you summon a spirit of earth. While pointing out the gangster you say "See that man and the symbols he is wearing? I need you to check inside of that building behind him and see if there are more people wearing similar clothes as him in that building." It makes a rumbling sound of consent before floating into the building.

Twenty second later it comes back a makes to sound rocks slamming together. Smiling you speak "Thanks. Can you knock out all of the people inside the building for me and then let me know when you are done?" You are not sure which members were forced into gang so you don't want to hurt any of them to badly. It makes a sound assent before reentering the building.

After a few minutes you see the front does slam open and stone arm pops out, grabbing the gangster in the front, before pulling him back into the building. After another minute the spirit returns to you. You thank him once more before entering the building yourself. As you search the building you find 5 unconscious members of the gang. You take everything of value from them that you can find, throwing them into your backpack. As you search the place you find some of that paper money, which still honestly baffles you, but you don't seem to find anything indicating where other bases are.

You ask your friend to dump them across the block, before you dismiss him and summon a spirit of fire. It crackles at you merrily in greeting. You crackle in return before asking it to burn down the drug house after you leave. Well that went perfectly if you say so and you do say so. You head outside of the drug house, whistling merrily.

You turn around and watch the drug house burn down. Its fires waving friendly at you, so you wave back. Fire is pretty great, but nothing beats lightning in your opinion. You decided to skip the next closest drug house and go to second closest and the double back afterwards that way you don't establish an obvious pattern. It takes about an hour to make your way over to the general area where the drug house is. It takes about another twenty minutes before you're pretty sure you have located another drug house. You decide to repeat the same strategy as last time since it went so well.

After ten minutes your friend lets you know that it is safe to go in. You loot the building for more valuables, once again not finding any maps. Why can't these guys have the locations of all their secret bases lying around, how inconsiderate can they get. As you leave the house it starts to burn down behind you. You began to hum a tune and skip down the sidewalk as you make your way back to the drug house that you passed. You are about ten minutes out from the next drug house when your stomach begins to rumble. You look up at the sun and you can see that it is past noon. You decide it's time for a lunch break and look around for a place to sit.

After a few minutes you find a rundown park and plop down on a bench. There are large patches of grass missing from where people walking on the grass and the bushes are overgrown. The play set is covered in graffiti and rusted, but that does not seem to discourage the kids playing on it. You pull out food from backpack and snack on it as you watch the people moving about the park. After a few minutes your done eating and you feel like trying out the swings. You walk over and sit down on a swing. You drop your bag down next to you and began to rock back and forth as you sing to yourself.

You are enjoying yourself when you notice that people are staring at you for some reason. Some of them are holding boxes up to their faces as they look at you. You slow down as you try to figure out why you chilling out would get their notice when you remember that you are invisible. Whoops. You hop off the swing and grab your bag. Now the people are pointing at where your bag used to be. Well looks like it is time to skedaddle before you attract any more attention. You are after all on a stealth mission.

After fifteen more minutes you make your way over to third drug house and wait for your spirit friend to clear up the people inside. While this plan of the Hollow Man sure is sensible it is also kind of boring to be honest. You kind of miss the pulse pounding action of a life and death battles, were you never know if you will come out the next minute alive. This feels like you don't know… chores you guess. Well at least you are getting some loot out of it.

When you get the all clear from your buddy, you head in and start to loot this place to the bedrocks, when you hear a squealing sound outside. You look out the window and don't see anything outside. You shrug and are about to turn around when the air seems to open like a sliding door in the street. Did you accidently rip a hole in space and time again? You don't think you have been fiddling with any eldritch magic lately, but you could be wrong. Several people coming pouring out of the hole, instead of things with too many tentacles, eyes, and mouths so you don't think it has anything to do with the Far Realms.

A man in a mask points at the building in your in and shouts "All right you motherfucking cock gobblers some limp dick prick thinks he can fuck with the Merchants. We are going to rip this fucker's dick off and then fuck him in his brand new cunt." Behind the man you see small reddish humanoid with wings and scorpion tail floating behind him.

Oh cool more guys to fight. You ask your buddy to go attack them while you head down to meet them. It pops in to reality in front of the Merchants and roars at them, when suddenly you hear the sound of hundreds of guns go off. Tearing your friend into shreds, he fades back into astral space. Oh no! Poor Cracks-With-Lightning! You hope he is okay. You did not see where those bullets came from so you should probably not go out in the open. You hear The Despoiler speak again "Ha! You dumb fuck, you think you can take me down that easily."

This is not going as planned at all. You were the one suppose to ambush them, not having them ambush you. You consider your options rapidly before deciding to sneak into the tear in reality. You are pretty sure that it will be safeish since the things that came out appear to be human. Since the Merchants came out of it stands to reason that it will lead back to their main headquarters. The last place they would expect you to be would be where they just came from so it would also be a great hiding spot. You make your way downstairs and head towards an open window. You slip out as you see somebody kicking in the front door.

You head around the house and into the street trying to make as little noise as possible. When you find yourself in front of the rift you peer in. It appears to be a small room with seats inside of it. You climb through the hole and look around. There base is a lot smaller then you thought it would be, maybe it is some sort of mobile portable base in its own pocket plane. In the front you see a blond woman holding on to a wheel and looking a painting of the building that you were just in. She has a creature made of various kinds of rusted metals welded together, floating behind her.

You sneak up behind her and examine what she is doing. The Transporter is fiddling with dials and muttering to herself. When she flip a switch the painting of the house changes. The house becomes darker and you see red blobs moving about inside of it. She picks up a box and speaks into it "Hey Skiddy I don't see anyone else's heat signature in there besides you and the rest."

You hear the Despoiler's voice come out of the box "Fuck, that sneaky little bitch must have run off when he knew I was coming inside. Next time that fucker attacks we should just blow up the building will he is still in it. I'm heading back you better be fucking ready."

You plop down in the seat next to the Transporter and reach over to the talky box that she was using. You grip it in your hand and pump it full of electricity, ripping it to shreds. You then drop your various illusions and grin at the Transporter and say "Hi! I am kidnapping you!"

The Transporter jumps in her seat and lets out a startled "What the fuck!" She reaches to her side and pulls out a gun that has little wheels on the bottom of it and starts to move it towards you. Your hand shoots out and grips the gun before it even has you in its crosshairs. You rend it in half as electricity dances across your hand.

You bop her on the nose and say sternly "Bad."

She stares at you incredulously and opens her mouth "Fuck off you bit-"

You bop her on the nose again "Bad." She sputters and glares at you and goes to open her mouth again when you put a finger to her lips "Shoosh" and pap her on the face. "Close the portal please." you say while pointing at the portal behind you.

"What the fuc-"

Bop. "Bad"

"Listen you bit-"

Bop. "Bad"

"I-"

Bop. "Bad"

She glares at you, but reaches over and flips a switch causing the portal to close. You pat her on the head and say "Good." Her glare intensifies.

You look over at the painting and see the Despoiler heading over towards where you are. You hear his voice coming from the painting "Bitch what the fuck to do you think you are doing. Open the god damn door right now or I am going to beat your ass when I get my hands on you."

Well you could leave now with the Transporter and figure out where the Despoilers base or abode is from her. That way you can ambush him next time. You are pretty sure that this some kind of ship capable of inter-planar travel due to the wheel. So you can head back to your base with the Transporter, but you don't know how to steer it so you will need the Transporter to be your helmsman.

Your turn to the Transporter and order "Raise the anchor and set sail. I shall be your navigator." She looks at you like you are a crazy person which is completely ridicules. You are perfectly sane the voices in the head have assured you of this and if you can't trust them who can you trust?

The Transporter mutters angrily to herself and pushes a lever with her foot and turns the wheel. "Where the f-" you raise your hand and she pauses "are we going?" she asks you.

"Um wait a sec." You turn to your backpack and fish out your map. "I guess hereish" you say pointing at the Empire territory.

The Transporter opens her mouth to say something and then closes it. After a few seconds she opens her mouth again "You do realize we are invisible right and that is a high traffic area." You stare at her blankly so she continues "Seriously!? Are you a fu… people can't see us, so they will hit us."

Oh wait you are an invisible ship, instead of a mobile pocket universe. It occurs to you that former was far more likely than the later now that you think about it. "Why don't you just fly up a little?" you enquire.

"We are in a van. We can't fly." She says as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. You have no idea what a van is so you will just have to take her word for it.

"Okay then turn off the invisibility I guess." you respond with a shrug.

She looks like she wants to tear her hair out before saying "We have turrets on top of the van which will cause the PRT to come after us. This is supposed to be driven at night or for emergencies. It is not meant to be driven around in broad daylight where traffic is."

"Didn't you just drive it here?" you ask confused.

"I just said emergencies you fucking bitch!" she screams at you. Bop. "Motherf-" she starts to let out but seems to catch herself. She grits her teeth and forces out "Why do you even want to go there in the first place?"

"I was hoping to start a gang war between the Empire and the Merchants" you reply.

She pushes down on a lever with her foot and buries her face in her hands. "And how are you going to do that?" she says her voice getting hysterical.

"I um..." you began. Now that you think about you don't know what any of the members of the Empire look like, where any of their bases are, or who any of them are since you did not ask for any details from the Hollow Man since your plan was to fight the Merchants. Man you did not think this through like at all.

Back to the first plan! What was is it again? Oh yeah you were going to attack Merchant bases to help drive the leadership out and then lay an ambush. Well you get step one and two done like a boss, but you totally forget to do step three. Good thing you have the Transporter right here, you can pump her for information or maybe even seduce her to your side.

Your eyes rove over the Transporter's body and you can't help but frown. She would be quite beautiful, but her body has been ravaged by drugs. Her nose looks like it has been broken recently and she also has a black eye causing your frown to deepen. You have feeling from the way the Despoiler was talking to her earlier that those they were gifts from him. She is returning your stare, looking at you expectantly. It takes a second to remember her previous question.

"I kinda did not have a plan thought out for starting a gang war." You admit. "So I am going back to plan A: destroying the Merchants by taking out their leaders myself. So I am going to need information from you to crush them."

She suddenly looks alarmed again you are unsure why. "I am not telling you how to defeat Skidmark. I would never betray him." she protests.

Oh? It looks like you are going to have to seduce the information out of her after all. You plan out your attack stratagem, the voices giving helpfully suggestion on how to woo her. She will soon be swooning at the sight of you, putty in your hands. Step on make her doubt her relationship with the Despoiler.

"Wait isn't he the one that was yelling at you earlier, threatening to you beat you?" you ask concern in your voice that you don't need to fake. "Has he ever beaten you before?"

She flinches and says "It is not like! He loves me. He just gets angry sometimes and can't control his temper. But he would never really hurt me."

You run your hand across her face. You deliberately move your hand under eye and across her nose causing her to flinch again before murmuring "It looks like he has all ready hurt you if you ask me."

She snaps at you "Well I didn't ask you."

You tilt her head towards the mirror showing her own face, holding it in place so that she can't look away. "Look at what he did to you." you say softly "You used to be beautiful. He is ruining you and you're letting him." You send healing energies through your hands. You feel her body shudder against your palm. Her nose and eye fix themselves. The damage from the drug use fades: her hair has luster to it again, her premature age lines fade, the decay in her teeth gone.

She stares at the mirror transfixed by the change to her face. Her hand rises up and feels the changes as though to make sure they are really there. "If you go back he will just keep destroying you piece by piece until there is nothing left of you. Do you even remember what you were like before he changed you?"

You can see the lost and scared expression entering her face. Tears are beginning to prick at her eyes. Good. You have shaken her, made her doubt the Despoiler and herself. Time for step two, make her depend on you. You lean close next to her ear and whisper "I can help you become what you once were if you let me. I would never let anyone hurt like the Despoiler hurt you." You turn her face back towards you and look her in the eye as you speak.

She is shaking now unable to look away from your eyes. "I-I don't…" she begins but falters unsure of what to say next.

You pull her into a hug and began to sing softly into her ear. You feel the calming effect of your song taking hold of her and she loses the tension in her body and melts into your hug. You hold her like this for a minute before she finally speaks up "Y-your right. Adam ruined me, turned me into this-this thing. What do you need to know?"

As you absently mindedly stroke the Transporter's hair as you consider her question. Since most of the Despoiler's people working with him are people who have hit rock bottom and nowhere else to go, you honestly don't want to fight them. It would be best to take him out quickly and with minimal amount of fuss. Ambushing him in his sleep would be the best since it gives him no time to fight back and ends it immediately.

"Do you know where the Despoiler sleeps?" you ask the Transporter.

"Yeah. We shared an apartment. I have the keys to get in." she answers.

"Good. I can deal with him tonight." you say.

She takes the wheel and drives you to the Despoiler's abode. She parks near the building and she begins to fidget nervously. Hmm. You need to calm her down and take her mind of the Despoiler. "So you make things right? Are you currently planning anything?"

Her eyes light up and she starts talking "Yeah, I specialize in making vehicles. I was currently thinking about making…" She starts going in depth about her latest invention. To be honest you don't understand most of what she is talking about, but that does not really matter, her talking about it seems to put her into a better place mentally.

She kinda of adorable when she rambling on about her creations: the way she waves her arms around, her eyes seem to sparkle, the goofy grin on her face. As she talks you play with her hair and start making an intricate braided ponytail. You hum a pleasant tune to yourself as you work and ask her the occasional question to prompt her to keep talking. She is so enraptured in describing her latest creation you don't think she even notices as you play with her hair.

You enjoy each other's company for several hours and you only notice the sun has set when your stomach starts to rumble. You pull some food out and offer some the Transporter. As you eat the Transporter stiffens looking behind you. "What's the matter?" you ask her.

She looks over at you and says "Adam is going up to our apartment."

You turn around and look at the painting and sure enough you see the Despoiler making his way up the stairs to his home. He looks pissed off about something. "When does he usually fall asleep?" you ask.

She shrugs "Usually when he passes out, so it is hard to say. Sometime after midnight he is usually fucking out of it."

You nod and say "Okay will just have to wait some more then." before going back to playing with her hair.

She finally notices what you were doing and exclaims "What the fuck! How! When!"

"When you were talking about tinkering thing. What you don't like it?" you say hurt entering your voice.

"No! I mean yes! It's pretty motherfucking sweet. You just took me by surprise is all. Where did you learn to do that anyway?" she stammers.

You shrug "No idea, it just came to me."

"You think you could show me how to do that shit" she asks.

"Sure" you chirp.

You spend the next couple of hours showing how to make designs with her hair. She looks over at her controls and goes "The lights are off and it is one in the morning, he should be out of it by now."

You grin and say "Cool. Okay I am going to go take care of this. Be back in a bit." You peck her on the cheek causing her eyes to widen and you think you see her blush. You throw invisibility over yourself and make your way up to the Despoilers apartment. You quietly as you can put the key in and open the door. You sneak in and look around until you find him lying face down on his bed.

You tip toe over to him and double check to make sure that he is asleep. Judging from his breathing you are pretty sure that he is out of it. You summon lightning to your hand, you see him stir but you plunge your hand into the back of his neck before he has any time to react. Your hand easily severs his spine and comes out the other side of his neck, decapitating him. You clean off your hand with magic and check the place for any useful loot.

You don't find any magic items much to your disappointment. You would think that a leader of a large gang would have at least one, but nada. You do find some money which you toss into your bag but beside that you don't find anything else of value. You head out of the apartment and walk over to where the Transporter's van was. You drop your invisibility when you get close and you see the rift open up again. You hop inside of it and wave merrily at the Transporter. "Done!" you say cheerfully.

She looks a little shaken and nods jerkily at you, a weak smile on her face. "That's … good" she says hesitantly. She drives for a while and ends up in an empty lot. You see tears begin to prick at her eyes again.

It looks like she beginning to doubt herself and her choice to join your cause. You should reassure her that she made the right call. You lean over and hug her. "Hey it's okay. You did the right thing. Now he can't hurt anymore people." you say softly as you make circles in her back with your hand.

She rests her head against you shoulder and she speaks her voice cracking "I know it's just … despite everything I still love him. I know it's wrong and I shouldn't, but I do. I don't want to talk about him right now. I'm not ready."

You sit there holding as she sobs silently against you. You rock her back and forth and you sing to her softly. After a few minutes her breathing begins to slow down and you notice that she has fallen asleep in your arms. Your pretty tired yourself now that you think about, after a long day of kicking and seducing ass, you deserve a rest.

Before you do that though you should probably call and check in with the Hollow Man. You maneuver gently around the Transporter to the pull out your talky box. When you flip it open it says you missed some calls. Huh. It seems like they are from the Hollow Man, yeah you should probably let him know that you are okay.

The talky box rings once before you hear the Hollow Man answer "Necros is that you? Why have you not been answering my calls?" he sounds worried and irritated.

"How do you do that?" you ask.

You hear him sigh before he speaks "Never mind, I'll show you how later. Where are you?"

"Inside the Transporter's invisible van." you reply.

He does not answer you for several seconds before asking "You mean Squealer?"

"Well I don't know if she squeals or not we have not got far into are relationship yet." you say.

"That's not-" he then pauses before proceeding "So are you with the Transporter right now?"

"Yep. She is all tuckered out so she can't talk right now." you say.

"So she is your prisoner then?" he asks.

"Uh no. I convinced her to join the side of rightness and good times. She helped me dispatch the Despoiler."

"I see." He says in a tone when people don't see what you are talking about. "That was much faster then I was expecting to be honest."

"Thanks!" you say. The Transporter stirs. Whoops you should be quieter. "It's getting late so I am going to be going to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow okay?"

"I- fine. Good night and be careful" he says.

"Night." And then you close your talky box.

You close your eyes and cuddle closer to her as you drift off.

* * *

Taylor sat there for a few minutes staring into space. 'Well that happened.' she thought. She was conflicted about killing Skidmark. On one hand he was piece of shit that had it coming, on the other hand she did murder him in cold blood. Her awake self seemed to have zero problems killing him and was completely unbothered by the act after the fact. Which brought up disturbing thought 'could she even feel guilt while she was awake?'

Then there was the whole attraction and seduction of Squealer which was weird as fuck. Taylor was pretty sure she was straight. She never found girls at school attractive. It was also kind of freaky how good she was at seducing Squealer. Her awake self was frankly an airhead who barley understands what's going on around her. But she had managed to flip her in like a minute and have her hand Skidmark over on a silver platter.

Sighing Taylor looked around to room. Once again Mr. Nibbles failed to be here when she woke. 'What an inconsiderate jerk.' Taylor eyed the archway, before sighing and walking through it again. Should she go and visit Rana again? Rana was a psycho, but she did seem at least have some idea what was going and was willing to help her. Or should she see if she could find someone else.

She could hear the same three songs as last time, but she heard two more that stood out from the rest as well. The first song filled her with a hungry filling in her body. She felt the need to consume grow stronger and stronger as she concentrated on it. The second song sounded like a howling wind. As she listened to it the sensation that she was all alone and how small she really was grabbed hold of her.

Yeah she much rather see if someone here is less psychotic before visiting Rana again. Of the remaining songs the one that seemed to contain no semblance of structure or pattern seemed the least ominous. The others were all a little disturbing and she rather doubted that they would be any better than Rana.

The song of change was rather hard to concentrate on due to its ever shifting nature. Not only was the sound and the meaning of the song were changing but so was the direction it came from. As time went on Taylor grew more frustrated since it felt like she was walking in circles and she was not getting anywhere. She couldn't even turn back anymore since she had no idea where she had started from and she could no longer hear the other songs anymore. With a growl of frustration Taylor took another step forward and then suddenly she was falling.

She was hundreds of feet above the ground and despite herself a scream escaped her mouth as she fell. With a jerk she stopped falling down but instead she was falling to the right, her body tumbling due to sudden change of direction. She then stopped as quickly as she started and found herself standing in a field of waist high grass. Dizzy from the sudden changes of motion Taylor lost her balance and fell forward onto her face.

As she pushed herself up to her feet the grass transformed into sand and a giant black sun hung above her. The heat from the sun was so strong she felt as though her skin was burning, sweat already pouring down her brow. 'Why did I think coming here was a good idea again?' she thought.

Abruptly the ground gave way under her and she found herself submerged in water. She was tossed around by the waves unable to control what direction they pulled her. Oh god she was going to die her here. "YoU gOt To EmBrAcE tHe ChAnGe, NoT fIgHt It." called out a voice.

Gasping for breath Taylor found herself lying on hard stone floor. Looking over she saw a hooded figure sitting on a throne of spoons. "How do I do that!?" she yelled back at him hysteria entering her voice.

The figure shrugged and spoke its voice fluctuating as it spoke "JuSt Go WiTh the FlOw I gUeSs?" Once again the world shifted this time Taylor found herself in a forest and the stranger was sitting on rock. "YoU gOt To AsSuMe It WiLl TuRn OuT aLl RiGhT aNd It WiLl. TrUsT iN tHe ChAoS aNd YoU wIlL bE fInE. iT wIlL hElP iF yOu ClOsE yOuR eYes."

Sitting up and closing her eyes Taylor tried to calm down. She doubted that she could put her trust in whatever this was, but what choice did she have? 'Go with the flow. Go with the flow.' she chanted to herself. She felt the consistency of the ground change under her but she ignored it. "Does this ever stop?" she asked.

"nO." it said.

'Well I defiantly not coming back here again' she thought. "How do I get out of here?"

"i HaVe No IdEa. I wIlL lEaVe WhEn It WaNtS mE tO." It responded sounding completely unconcerned.

"How long have you been here?" she asked dread entering her voice.

"hMmMm 1923458.4 YeArS." It answered nonchalantly.

Taylor felt something soft spring up under her and felt her legs dangling, but kept her eyes firmly shut. 'God I better wake up soon.' she thought. "Is there nothing else I can do the make it easier to maneuver through?" she asked.

"wElL. yOu CoUlD eAt ThIs." it said.

Hesitantly she opened her eyes to find herself sitting on a one foot wide square over a black abyss. The figure seemed to be hundreds of feet away lounging away on its own square. It tosses into the air a purple shaped object. As it moved towards her the scenery changed again causing it to suddenly by right in front of her and smacking her in the face. Looking down at it in her lap she sees that it is a purple fruit leaking a neon grin fluid.

Taylor stared down at the fruit. Anything that leaked bright green fluids really did not look safe to her. She turned her head to ask the stranger what it did, but there was a mountain range between them now and she could no longer see it. Biting her lip she weighed her options. Could she actually get hurt inside of here? Could she die? If she could there was a good chance that this place would be the end of her. Sighing to herself she raised the fruit to her mouth and took a bite. 'Fuck it. Better alive and fucked up, then dead.'

'It tastes like a greasy cheeseburger.' The taste was not like what she expected at all, which she should have honestly expected in this place. As she chewed it the taste changed to raw sewage and she had to force herself not to vomit. After a few seconds she tasted the sound of blue, much to her confusion. 'Ugh I better eat this quickly and get it over with.' Taylor proceeded to swiftly take bites out of the fruit and swallowing quickly as possible so that she could not taste it as much.

She sat there in a field of swords and waited for the fruit to take effect. 'So is something suppose to happen because I don't feel any different?' she wondered. Then the world shifted and she shifted with it. She was perched on a branch looking for prey. 'There.' She spread her wings and dove at her target, her talons sinking it the rabbit's soft flesh. Her sharp beak closing around its thro-

-She danced and crackled, her body moving across the log. Her brothers and sisters were devouring the forest with her. Animals fled from her and her family in a panic. Soon it would all be ash and she would be no more, but now was not time for such thoughts now was time for eati-

-The sea below her tossed and turned. She thundered and boomed trying to inform them of their peril, but it did them no good. She hurled lightning to show them the way to safety, but they would not make it. Waves reaching tall as mountains came crashing down along the coast, pulling the village into the depths. She mourned their loss and wep-

-She stood tall and eternal above the world below her and clouds at her head. Life grew across her body, setting roots into her, cracking her, but she allowed it. While they could chip away at her, she would out last them all. What was her nam-

-Wriggling and writhing she burrowed into the mound of dead flesh before her. She gorged herself to the point where it felt like she would explode, but she could not stop, the smell of rot was intoxicating. She laid her eggs in a crevice. Soon her children would join her in her feasting. What's happening to m-

-She was the bringer of their doom. She brought her ax down splitting the child's head open. She laughed at the wailing of the horrified mother, she would kill her to but much more slowly. She made short work of those that would oppose her, trying to protect their home from her wrath. Fools. The rest were fleeing from her, but they would not escape her. I think I am going insa-

-She sent waves of heat at world under her. The land was cracking from the power of her heat. The water evaporated, leaving the people without sustenance. The plants withered and died, but she would not stop. They begged to their gods for salvation. But none would come. There was only you and you would show them no mercy. Please make it st-

-Rooted to the ground she listened to the calls of animals. A jay perched on one of her many arms, calling for its mate. As she drank up the water below her, insects crawled at her roots chewing on her. A man with ax walks towards her. He takes a swing. It hurts! She would scream, but she has no mouth. Somebody hel-

AN: I have caught up to what I have already written so the next update will been in a week or two.


	4. Day 7

You wake up in the arms of busty blonde snuggling up against you in her sleep. You had the trippiest dream last night, you can't remember the exact details, but yeah it was weird. You also feel more in touch with nature for reasons you can't articulate. It's like, you don't know what's the expression, you've been one with the world or something.

When you look down at your arm you notice that it looks different than it used to, but you have trouble putting your finger on how. Nothing is noticeably different than before, but now it seems more perfect? When you wiggly your fingers the movement is beautiful and breathtaking. You cock your head to the side and poke your arm, the motion graceful, your skin feel the same. Eh. It's not important.

You sit there enjoying the Transporter embrace. You should probably get your day started soon, but hugs are the best. Well okay, sex is better and alcohol even better than that, but they are still pretty awesome. You need to meet up with the Hollow Man soon and talk with him about your next step to clean up the city. You still got two gangs to take care of and the Merchants still have a bunch of loot lying around that you haven't grabbed yet.

"Transporter. Transporter." you say trying to wake her but she just mumbles gibberish at you and refuses to wake. You sigh and bop her on the nose.

"Motherfucker!" She jerks awake and flails around. "What? Where I am? Who are you? Wait a sec I know you." She stares at you in confusion with brow furrowed before recognition enters her eyes. "Holy fuck yesterday happened didn't it?"

"I would assume so. I don't know how you can't have a yesterday, unless reality came into existence today." you respond. You are pretty sure you existed yesterday, but that could be what they want you to think, whoever they are.

"I what?" she says sounding confused no doubt about why these shadowy figure want her to believe that she exists.

"Any way I woke you up since we need to go meet up with the Hollow Man." You inform her.

"Who?" she asks.

"He is a friend who is helping me take on all the gangs in the city. I'm gonna call him and let him know that we are coming." you explain as you pull out your talky box. You push a bunch buttons and speak when the ringing stops "Good Morning!"

"Good Morning" responds the Hollow Man much more sedately.

"Hey where do you want to meet up?" you ask.

"Where are you now?" he says.

You turn to the Transporter and enquire "Where are we again?"

"A lot by Anderson and Bailey." she tells you.

You repeat what the Transporter told you to the Hollow Man and he tells you "I will be over in ten minutes."

You close your talky box and the Transporter asks you "What's up with your voice?"

"Huh?" you respond eloquently.

"It's like suddenly sexy and shit. I-I mean attractive. I mean-. I shit. It's like your perfect in every way" she stutters, her cheeks reddening.

You preen. She thinks you are sexy! You respond "I'm not doing anything different from usual."

She no longer can meet your eye and is firmly staring at her feet. You shrug and pull out some food from you bag, handing some to the Transporter. As you are eating you see the Hollow Man show up on the painting. You point and say "Hey it is the Hollow Man. Open the portal."

She looks over and chokes "Is that Oni Lee!?"

You think he said that was his nick name or something "Yep!"

"How do you know him!" she demands.

"I just told you ten minutes ago we are friends, remember?" you say confused.

She looks frustrated and mutters "Fuck it I don't care." and opens the portal.

The Hollow Man climbs in and stares at the Transporter silently for a minute. She just sits there and fidgets. He turns to you and stops before asking "Necros do you have some sort of master effect on?"

"A what?" you ask confused.

"When I look at you it's like… I can't really put it into words, but you seem more bright and … real." He says slowly as though he is looking for the right words.

You shrug and say "I am not doing anything. Anyway we got more important things to do! Today I got to go tell the rest of the Merchants that I already beat them and stuff. Also loot their remaining bases for treasure." you inform your harem. Wait you mean your teammates. "How's the E88 stuff been going for you?" you ask the Hollow Man.

"Well I did not take out their leadership in a day like you managed. But I did manage to badly injure Rune by knocking her off one of her platforms. With Othala in PRT custody the Empire will not be able to fix her legs and she should be out of the fight for a great deal of time. Victor should still be down as well from our fight two days ago." he reports.

You give him a thumbs up and say "Cool. Also the Merchants have another soul-bound called Moose or something? Do you think he will be a problem?"

The Transporter blinks "You mean Mush?"

You shrug "Sure?"

"I doubt it. He didn't really do shit except get high unless Skidmark ordered him to do otherwise." she responded.

"So the Transporter will show me the remaining bases today and tell them all to go home." you tell the Hollow Man.

"You do realize that they are all drug addicts? Even if they want to stop committing crimes they are going to go through withdrawal and will do whatever it takes to get more drugs." asks the Hollow Man.

Crap, you forgot about that. Most of them had been turned into addicts forcefully if you recall correctly, so leaving them without help for their drug addiction would be cruel. You look over at the Transporter. She is going to go through withdrawal soon herself. Unfortunately you don't have any spells that can just end drug addiction. You can the flush drugs out of their system, but the physical and psychological dependencies you can't fix. You could try to create the spell, but you would need to set up a lodge, that would take seven days and then it would take even longer to invent the spell.

"Do you know any healer that would be able to fix that?" you ask.

He hesitates before answering "Panacea might be able to it. She is the most powerful healers on the east coast, but you would have to convince her to do it."

"Okay I think I will try convincing Pancreas to help me with this. Where would I find her?" you say.

"I believe that Panacea volunteers in Brockton Bay General in the evenings during the week. Since it is Sunday I believe that she starts earlier in the day. Although she is probably busy what with the gang war going on, so she may be hard to meet right now." he explains.

"Okay I'll bring the Transporter and see if Panda can help fix her and then talk her into helping the rest of the Merchants." you say.

The Hollow looks over at the Transporter before saying "You will need to get Squealer some different clothing, with what you did with her hair and some more… respectable clothes I don't think anyone would recognize her."

The Transporter looks annoyed for some reason. You reach over to your backpack and pull out some of you cash. You then say "Okay. Will this be enough of for clothes?"

He takes the money and looks it over before nodding. "I will go procure clothes for her." He then addresses the Transporter "You need to show her how to use her phone and help her count the money." Then in afterthought as he is heading out "Make sure she understands what the money is actually worth."

You think you hear the Transporter mutter "Dick." She turns to you and says "So you don't know how to use a phone? Didn't you just use one earlier?"

"What is a phone?" you ask confused. You don't think you have heard of this phone thing before and you certainly don't remember ever using one.

The Transporter looks at you like you are an idiot and sighs. "You know the thing you used to talk the Hollow Man earlier? That is a phone."

Phone is another word for mouth? A grin shows up on your face. So the Hollow Man wants the Transporter to show you how to use your mouth huh. Kinky. The Hollow Man is so considerate and a boss wingman. "Okay then why don't you show me how to use my phone then" you say in a sultry voice.

The Transporter's cheeks redden deeply and she stutters "Y-yeah okay." She then pulls out a talky box out of her pocket and opens it. "Right so I am going to assume you have no idea what you're doing." _Rude_! You know how to use your mouth like a pro! "So when dialing somebody's phone you use a ten digit numbers…" The hell is she talking about? Oh wait she meant your talky box is called a phone. Ha ha whoops.

You spend next hour or so learning how to use you talky box properly. Which is honestly is not as fun as learning new tricks with your mouth, but does seem a little important. After that the two of you start counting up your pilfered gains. It turns out there was about 4,367 dollars worth, which the Transporter informs is a moderately large amount. The Hollow Man comes back with some clothes for the Transporter and then takes you outside while she changes. You would protest, but you are busy right now you can have sexy times later.

A few minutes later the Transporter comes out in her new clothes and you bid farewell to the Hollow Man. He reminds you that if you get in over your head to call him, he looks at the Transporter as he saying this. You throw the illusion of the curly dark haired woman on again as you and the Transporter head out.

You follow her and after twenty minutes you enter a rundown building. Inside is one of those carriage things. She takes the wheel and drives you for a few minutes deeper into the city. She pulls into a lot in front a large building that says Brockton Bay General and you both head inside. In the front lobby you see a woman at a desk. You walk over and ask "Do you know where Pandora is?"

The woman stares at you a confused expression on her face. The Transporter speaks up and says "She means Panacea."

The woman replies "I am sorry, but Panacea is busy right now. Unless you have scheduled appointment with her, you are going to have to wait for another member of our staff for treatment."

Damn it. Okay it looks like you are going to have to convince this gate keeper to let you in to see Pancake. You need her magical healing syrup to save all those people from what the Despoiler did to them. You focus your thoughts on the picture of the Transporter slowly going mad as she struggles through withdrawal and your heart clenches, tears begin to form at your eyes.

Your voice trembles as you speak "B-but my friend was attacked by a Merchant. He got her addicted to drugs and she is going to go through withdrawal soon. She needs help and I don't know what to do. If anything happens to her I don't know if I could…" You stop speaking at this point began to sob uncontrollably.

The woman in front of you looks horrified and unsure of herself. She speaks hesitantly "Sssh it's okay. Why don't the two of you sit down over there and I'll see if I can get Panacea to come see your friend." You sniffle and nod before grabbing onto the Transporter's arm and lead her to a seat. You cling onto her tightly refusing to let go. You are going to save your friend no matter what.

The Transporter whispers to you "Holy shit. I didn't think you would be able to talk your way through that. How were able to cry on command like that?"

You mutter back "I just thought about how much you would suffer if I failed. It made me sad. I promised I would take care of you and I am going to do it no matter what." The Transporter has an odd expression on her face now, but does not say anything as you sit and wait for Panini and her magic sandwiches.

After a few minutes a nurse brings you and the Transporter to a room and tells you that Panama will be seeing you soon. You wait another half an hour when you see a girl in a white hood come into the- GOOD GODS WHAT IS THAT, SHE GOING TO KILL YOU ALL. Behind the Nature Bender you see a pale mantis like humanoid. ZIK-Chil. Oh god oh god oh god. You start to hyperventilate. The voices are screaming at you that you need to get away right now.

The Nature Bender looks at you in confusion, but you know it is an act to hide her true evil nature, before turning to the Transporter and asks "I thought you were the one going through withdrawal? Why is she suddenly freaking out?"

The Transporter looks nonplussed as though she does not realize that you are both doomed. "I have no idea she was fine a minute ago." She turns to and says in quiet voice "Hey calm down, Panacea is here. Remember you wanted to talk to her?"

Oh Gods the magic healing Panda is the Nature Bender. Nononononono. The Nature Bender starts to reach over towards you. NO! You scramble to hide under your chair to get away from her. Mr. Chair will keep you safe. The Nature Bender looks hurt for some reason. "She is afraid of me." She says in dead voice.

The Transporter looks surprised "Why would she be afraid of you? She was the one who wanted me to meet with you."

The Nature Bender looks stricken no doubt about her cover being blown and says "I don't… look I don't have a lot of time what was you needed me to help you with."

The Transporter looks at you with concern, before turning back to the Nature Bender and says "A member of the Merchants got me addicted, I want to stop, but I don't know if I can stop."

The Nature Bender shakes her head "A lot of the damage from drugs is neurological and I d- can't do anything with brains. The most I can do is reversing the damage done through the rest of your body."

She Lies! The Nature Bender tries to deceive you as per her treacherous nature, but you know better. Your panic is replaced by rage. How dare she not help the Transporter! She has the ability to do so and she withholds it from her. You feel your necrotic energies building up. You are unsure what will happen if you release it, but you are pretty sure it is not an attack.

* * *

Amy was starting to get irritated. The past few days she had been running around dealing with the influx of patients coming into the hospital due to the gang war suddenly springing up. She had already been working 8 hours today and was dead on her feet. She wished she could just go home, but she couldn't bring herself the leave the hospital.

And now one of the nurses had decided to put some drug addict on her list of patients. It was honestly a waste of her time and the time other people who needed her right now. She would have skipped the appointment if it wasn't for the nagging feeling of guilt if she did. She just knew it would bother her the rest of the day and she did not want to deal with the guilt. She couldn't remove the addiction and she just knew that the patient would start to argue with her about it, which is just what she needed today.

She held in sigh as she turned away from the crazy woman hiding beneath a chair and spoke to blonde woman. "I don't… look I don't have a lot of time what was you needed me to help you with."

The blonde woman glanced at her friend before turning back to Amy and said "A member of the Merchants got me addicted, I want to stop, but I don't know if I can stop."

Great now Amy felt even shitter about not being able to help her. But she had rules and she was not going to break them. She shook her head as she tried to keep her guilt out of her voice "A lot of the damage from drugs is neurological and I d- can't do anything with brains. The most I can do is reverse the damage done through the rest of your body." Fuck she had almost slipped up and revealed she was able to affect brains. Ugh she needed to get some sleep.

Suddenly Amy felt the fatigue drain out of her and she felt warm. The world felt lighter and brighter, all the things that used to bother her did not seem so important anymore. She felt a pull and she looked back over at the woman hiding under the chair and lost her breath. She was the most beautiful person Amy had ever laid her eyes on. She made Victoria's beauty pale in comparison. The fact that she was hunched over in fear under that chair was heartbreaking. Amy's heart clenched at the thought of not helping her friend and how she had hurt her goddess. To say no to such a divine figure seemed like heresy now.

"Hey are you okay?" asked the goddess's consort. Amy can't help but feel jealous of her for being graced by the redhead's favor. How Amy longed for it herself. "Hey are you in there?"

Amy spoke to her without taking her eyes off of her goddesses, her voice dreamy with a goofy grin on her face "I have never felt better."

The blonde turned and demanded "What did you do to her?!" How dare she demand things from her goddesses! Amy opens her mouth to put her in place but her goddesses spoke up and she would never interrupt her.

"Um I think I hit her with a glamour?" she said sheepishly and squirmed adorable, causing Amy to let a sigh of longing out.

"Why did you do that!? Do you know how much trouble we are going to get into if anyone finds out you mastered her!" hissed the ungrateful wench. Amy glares at her for her insolence.

"Nature Bender was lying! She could totally fix you and she chose not to!" the goddesses exclaimed looking angry. Amy blushed 'She already had a cute pet name for her!' Wait she also upset that Amy had been denying her consort the treatment she needed.

Amy shook her head and wailed "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll fix her right now." Amy reaches over and grabbed the consort and began to undo all the damage caused by the drugs. She hesitates for a second at the brain, but she can't fail her goddesses. She undid all of the neurological damage and left her brain good as new. Maybe the goddesses will forgive her.

The consort blinked and stood there for a second. "I uh holy shit it worked, um thanks." She said to Amy, but Amy paid no attention and instead stared at her goddesses.

"So uh do you come here often?" Amy said playing with hair and smiling flirtatiously at her goddesses.

The goddesses blinked in confusion before responding "Um no. I have never been here before."

"Wow you really got her with that glamour thing. Wait you can undo it right?" the consort said with concern.

"I think it wears off after twenty four hours?" the goddesses said in tone as if she was not sure, which would be silly since she is perfect. "Well since she wants to help us, we should have her come with us to go fix the Merchants."

"Of course I will help!" Amy exclaimed. "I would do anything for you."

The consort groaned into her hands "How are we going to leave with her without anyone noticing?"

"I'll just tell the Director Reinheart that I am not feeling well and I am going home early to rest. I'll meet you across the street in ten minutes and can go out." Amy says.

* * *

The Nature Bender is playing with her hair and fluttering her eyelashes at you causing you to shudder. While you really don't want to be near her like at all, you do need her help for those people to be cured of their drug addiction, so you will just have to suffer the Nature Bender's presence. "Yeah okay. Will see you outside in ten minutes." you say trying to give her a smile, but it comes out more like a grimace. You grab the Transporter's arm and sprint out of the room.

When you make your way across the street Transporter hisses in your ear "Seriously what the fuck were you thinking. If anyone finds out we did this we are so fucking dead. Messing with healers that are heroes gets everyone to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Is she going to remember what you made her do after the glamour wears off?"

Shit. That is not good. "I think she will remember most of it? The fine details will be a bit blurry, but she would more or less remember the basic events." you respond.

The Transporter buries her hands in face and groans "We are so fucked."

You pat her on the back and say "Hey don't worry it will work out all right. Even if we get in trouble at least we will have helped all those people, so it is worth it."

She does not look at all reassured and pulls out her talky box. She looks at as if she is trying to decide what to do, before sighing and putting it back in her pocket. "You really think it will turn out okay?"

You nod "I mean we're just going around helping people. How mad could they get?"

"You are kidnapping and mind controlling Panacea." she responds. "Her family may just try to kill us."

Okay yeah. The whole glamour thing is a little iffy morally speaking, but she is evil and you are just having her heal people, so it's not like you are doing anything terrible. "If we return her safe and sound before anyone realizes she is gone, I don't see how it would be that big a deal, I mean it is not like we are hurting her or anything."

"Yeah were not making her do anything terrible." she mutters to herself as though she is trying to convince herself it is true.

After a few minutes you see the Nature Bender comes outside. She changed out of her white robe and is instead wearing jeans and t-shirt. She hurries over to you. She smiles at you and asks "How do I look?"

"Um good?" you say.

Her smile widens and she looks like your compliment meant the world to her. Wow you really hit her hard with that glamour. You all walk to the Transporter's carriage and get in. "So we should probably call a meeting or something right? So we can get most of them together so we can heal them and let them know that the Merchants are done."

The Transporter nods and pulls out her talky box and tells somebody that there is going to be meeting that is mandatory in two hours at the main base. As you driving the Nature Bender keeps trying to flirt with you much to your discomfort. She is currently making doe eyes at you and gushing about your hair, when her talky box starts to ring. "Oh it is my sister, should I answer it?"

* * *

Victoria was bored out of her mind. She had spent the last two hours on patrol looking for some Nazis to kick the shit out of, only to find no one. She had thought with the ABB and E88 were skirmishing across the city she would be able to kick some ass, but they managed to elude her so far today. She had found some gangbangers yesterday, but they had been nothing but small fry. Today would be waste since she would have to head home soon after hours of futile searching. Her Mom would ream her ass if she did not get her schoolwork done and she had not even started it yet this weekend.

Her stomach at this point started rumbling. Sighing she landed on a nearby building and sat on the edge. 'Should I eat out or just call it a day and go home? You know what I should call Ames and ask if she wants to eat.' Yeah Amy defiantly needed a break after all the work she been doing this week. Victoria pulled out her phone and called. Amy picked up after about the third ring.

"Hi Ames I was thinking we should go out for lunch and have some us time. What do you think?" Victoria asked.

"Um well I kind of already have plans." replied Amy.

'Wait what?' Victoria blinked "You are going out and taking a break without me making you. Who are you and where is the real Amy" she joked.

"Vicky I can go out do things by myself you know." she said sounding flustered.

"Geeze Ames chill out. So what are you up to?" she asked curious.

"I uh kind of going out on a date." she said sounding embarrassed.

"Really!?" Victoria squealed. 'About fucking time' she thought. Getting Amy to go on a date was like trying to pull teeth. "So who is he? Do I know him? When do I get to meet him so I can give him you hurt my sister I break your legs speech?"

"I don't think you know her. We met at the hospital and hit it off." She says. Victoria could hear dreaminess enter Amy's voice.

'Somebody's got a crush.' Victoria thought with amusement, before what Amy said registered. "Wait her? You're gay?" Victoria said surprised.

"Yeah." she mumbles.

"Amy why did you never say anything when I set you up on all of those dates with guys? I know some girls at school that might have been interested." Victoria said exasperation entering her voice.

"I don't know" Amy said her voice getting quieter.

Sighing Victoria rolled her eyes "So is she cute?"

"The cutest." Amy said embarrassment reentering her voice. "Um look she is right her and can I talk to you later."

"Go and have fun you big goof. You can tell me about your date later." Victoria said fondly. It looked like her sister was finally learning to relax, thank god for that. She had no idea why Amy had been hiding in the closet like that though. She had to have known that Victoria would be there for her right? Well they could talk about that later tonight. She was happy that Amy had finally found someone that would help her relax. She had been worried if Amy kept going along like this Amy would have snapped.

* * *

While the Nature Bender is talking to her sister you put your hands over your ears and hum to yourself. Listening to other people's private conversations is rude after all. When she puts away her talky box you ask "So what did she want?"

"She just wanted to ask if I wanted to go to lunch, but I'm busy so I told her couldn't make it. She worries about me a lot and tries to check up on me often." she informs you.

If you were her sister you would be worried about what she gets up to as well. Her sister must be trying to reform her or something, since nobody else seems terrified of her, the sister's plan must be working. Maybe your snap judgment was harsh. You really shouldn't judge someone by their species, if she is trying to be a good person that's what matters. You make a concerted effort to look her in the eye, even if it fills you with a dread.

"So um…" you start but trail off unable to think of anything to say. God this is awkward. "What do you do for fun?" you say unsure.

"Well I like to hang out with my sister, she is the greatest, well except for you, and I like to um… " she stops and seems unable to think of anything else, which is kind of sad really.

"So you don't experiment on people or anything right?" you ask.

She shakes her head vigorously "I would never! I only use my power for healing and I am always careful. It is way too dangerous for me to go around playing around with it."

Huh. That is not what you were expecting at all. "And you were against healing the Transporter because?"

"Who?" she asks confused. You point at the Transporter. "Oh well I never touched a person's brain before. They are really complicated and a slight change can change a person completely. So I was afraid I would be unable to fix any of the mistakes I could have made."

"What!" screams the Transporter and stops the carriage. "You didn't mess anything up with me right!"

"Uh I thinks so?" she says unsure.

The Transporter is glaring murder at you. You start to fidget. Okay maybe you were a little rash back there. Hopefully your action didn't permanently mess up the Transporter. Maybe it would not be the best idea to have the Nature Bender fiddling with all those minds if she does not know exactly what she is doing.

Well you got at least two hours till the meeting roughly starts so you have time to try and rework your plan. Also now that the Nature Bender brought it up, it is lunch time and you are getting hungry. Maybe you should talk it out over lunch. You are thinking you should treat both the Nature Bender and the Transporter, what with the kidnapping and the impromptu brain surgery respectively. You know as your way of saying sorry.

"Do you know a good place to eat around here?" you ask the Nature Bender.

She nods and says "Yeah there is a place near here that Victoria and I go sometimes when I take a break from the hospital." She gives directions to the Transporter who merely grunts and drives you there.

When you get out of the carriage the Transporter walks away and says "I'm going for a walk. I can't be around you right now." Ouch. You feel like you should say something, but you are really not sure what to say. You are also pretty sure that going after her right now would be a mistake. You should wait till she calms down before talking you think. The Nature Bender heads inside the building and you trail behind her feeling subdued. You order what the Nature Bender orders since you are not really sure what most of the stuff on the menu is.

As you wait for your food the Nature Bender makes googly eyes at you making you uncomfortable. Man today sucks ass. Sighing to yourself you try to start a conversation "So why haven't you practiced doing brains on people who have gone into comas or something. I mean even if you got it slightly wrong it still would be better than being in a coma right?"

She pauses and looks unsure of herself before answering "Well the thing is I'm worried that if it start editing people's brains even just for healing, I may…" she stops talking looking a little lost. She seems to be struggling with herself before she speaks up again in almost a whisper "Well before I met you I was kind of in love with my sister. She would never love me like I love her, but I could make her love me with just a touch. So I made it a rule that I would never touch people's brains no matter what so I would never give into the temptation." She then brightens up "I have never been able to talk about this before but ever since I met you, I don't feel the same way I did about my sister. It's such a relief that I am no longer such a freak."

Oh gods damn it. Now you feel like a huge bitch. You are just the worst. You began to fidget again unsure how to respond. This whole glamour thing was huge mistake. Maybe you should see if you can break it early. You don't think you could take much more of this guilt.

You reach out in astral space and feel the glamour around the Nature Bender. It is wrapped around her like veil. You pull on it trying to remove it from her aura, but it just stretches as you do so. You began to twist and pull at from several different directions causing it to become taut. Since it looks like you are headed in the right direction so you give it another mighty jerk causing it to fray. Almost there. You give it one last great heave causing it to rip apart and fade away.

The Nature Bender freezes and all emotion leaves her face and she stares at you with a dead eyed look. Oh crap. Did you just shatter mind. Please don't let it be that you shattered her mind. Oh wait. Her hands seem to be gripping the table so tightly that they have gone bone white. So that means that her mind is one piece, you hope, probably.

"I'm sorry!" you blurt out. She does not respond at all, so you start babbling "I well… you see… I thought that since you made a pact with a Zik-Chil that you were evil. I was wrong and I uh I'm sorry about the brain thingy, I didn't know that it scared you so much. I just thought you wouldn't heal the Transporter because you were evil so I got mad and may have over reacted a little bit what with the glamour. Again sorry."

She does not respond at all to your completely coherent and well thought out apology. Her lack of anything is beginning to make you more and more nervous. You can't say for sure but you think that she may in fact be considering the idea that she should be upset with you. But you could be imagining things and her complete lack of emotion and movement is her way of showing happiness.

You sit there wringing your hands waiting for some kind of response. The waitress brings your food and gives you two a curious look, before leaving. You don't touch your food since you think it might be rude to eat while you are waiting for somebody to accept an apology. Wait she is moving now. Looks like she is hyperventilating, so progress?

"Hey it's not so bad. Wait I mean the thing I did was bad, but you didn't do anything bad. I mean all you did was heal the Transporter which is a good thing. She seemed fine to me and now she is finally free from her addiction. You helped turn her life around." you say trying to calm her down. She starts shaking violently so maybe it worked?

"Um so… well I am paying for lunch, so you have whatever you want on the menu. I think I should have enough gold pieces for anything. I mean paper money. What's up with paper money anyway? It is so light and papery, I mean it just seem so naturally worthless. It burns so easily so how do loot it off bodies after you fireball them? You use paper for blowing your nose and wiping your butt. You don't use gold for things like that. Just common sense really." you ramble nervously.

"Just… just shut up." the Nature Bender says, her voice carrying an undercut of anger. Her hands are no longer griping the table and you can see color returning to her hands. She sits there quietly for another minute before she starts to eat and you start to eat as well. You send her worried looks as you eat, unsure if you should say something or stay silent.

As you sit there in silence waiting for the Nature Bender to say something. Will she forgive you? Should she? You took her agency away from her and made her do things that she thought were wrong. You need to make this up to her somehow. After a moments consideration you place your hands face up on the table as show of submission and penitence. You and the Nature Bender both know with a single touch she could destroy you or worse keep you alive. You are giving her the chance to exact her vengeance on you if she so wishes.

She stares at your hands in confusion. Does she not get what you are trying to tell her? You try and find the words the show her you are willing to suffer what she suffered to make amends. The idea of being without control starts that itching feeling at the back of your head, but this time you grab a hold of it instead of ignoring it. You know inside what you will find is not pleasant and may even hurt you greatly, but you push forward anyway.

You… you remember that you are not who you once where. You have been possessed by others and they have warped your mind. They are the voices that speak to you and they have taken away all that made you, you. You open your mouth and try to express this "If you wish to punish me I accept it. I… I understand what it means to not be yourself and have others control you. Even now the voices are screaming, commanding me to follow their whims. It hurts to focus like this, but I can remember myself if I try hard enough. I was…" Damn it. It is on the tip of your tongue.

You try to again push past the barrier hiding your identity away from you. You heave with all your will and something snaps. You feel a flood of memories pouring into your mind and you scream in pain. Oh gods it hurts. You remember centuries of your life as a bird. Wait no you were fire. Or was it stone. Or. Or. Or. Oh god you can't remember who you were originally. You used to know even you didn't want to remember. You could always retrieve your identity so not knowing never bothered you before. But know it is lost to you and it hurts not knowing. Who are you! Who are you! You hear a voice screaming "Who am I! Who am I! Who am I!"

What were you doing again? Your face hurts and it feels wet. You currently seem to be laughing hysterically, but you can't remember what is so funny. When you wipe your hand over your face and your hands come back covered in blood. You see chunks of your hair on table with pieces of your scalp attached. You pump necrotic energy through your body and undo the damage. When you look up you notice the Nature Bender and the rest of the patrons of this establishment are looking at you in terror. The Nature Bender grabs your arm and you can't help but flinch as she drags you out of the restaurant. "What the fuck was that!?" she hisses at you.

"What was what? How did I get here again?" you ask confused

"You don't remember?" she says surprised.

"I uh no." you say a little lost. You are not sure what you are not remembering so you can't say for sure.

"Shit. Your power is really fucking you up isn't it?" you hear pity in her voice. How dare that pathetic mortal worm pity you! You are a god! You will flay the flesh from her bones! Whoa were had that come from? You are not feeling so great. "Look you need help okay? There is a facility up in Pennsylvania that specializes in parahumans whose powers are out of control. Let's go to the PRT and they get you the help you need."

Oh you are not falling for that again! Last time you got stuck in a sanatorium 'to help you get better' they bound you and preformed experiments on you. It took you years to escape that place. You still have nightmares and daymares about your time there. You remember the never ending knives and the needles. How they peeled your flesh apart to see how you ticked. How you hate needles. You scoff at the Nature Bender "And be dissected while I am strapped to a table with no pain killers! Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me."

She stares at you incredulously, her mouth hanging open. She shakes her head and says "What! No they don't torture their patients. That is against the law."

"Ha! When has the law ever meant anything to scientists?! They think they are above us all what with their clipboards and logic. 'Oh just think what progress we can make if we figure out how you shoot lightning. Here just let me stab you with this knife for the next four hours! Would you quite it with the screaming I am trying to work here!'" you rant. "You said you didn't do human experiments but you are on their side aren't you! Aren't you!" Lightning is dancing in your hands and you are shaking in rage and terror.

The Nature Bender backs up raising her hands in the air placatingly, before trying to speak in a soothing voice, but you can hear the fear in it. "I'm sorry I didn't know that you had gone through that, but you need to calm down before you hurt somebody you don't mean to again."

She is right. You don't want to hurt somebody innocent, you are no scientist after all. You breathe in and began to center yourself. You feel your emotions melt away as you sing and you find yourself calm once more. She speaks again "Look if we go to PRT they can help shut down whoever it was that did that to you and we can make sure that they never hurt anybody again."

You snort and a vindictive smile appears on your face. You speak your voice filled with glee "Not much point doing that since I already killed them all."

She makes a hissing noise before starting to speak again, but you cut her off "I don't have time for this. I have to go save the Merchants Guild from itself. Since you are not going to help me with that, I will have to think of some other way to help them."

She looks confused before her expression clears "Wait when you were having me go fix the Merchants, what did you mean?"

You blink. You guess you never did explain your plan to her. "Well I killed the Despoiler yesterday so-"

"Wait you killed someone! Who did you kill?!" she says sounding alarmed.

You speak your voice filled with annoyance for being interrupted "The Despoiler is the leader of the local Merchants Guild."

"Holy shit! You killed Skidmark!" she says.

You roll your eyes and huff "Anyway since many of the people in his guild were the homeless he picked up off the street and got hooked on drugs, I was planning on curing their addiction with your help, so they can go back to living their lives. But like I said what with your brain thing, I am going to have to think of something else, unless you changed your mind."

She looks torn when she speaks "I… I can't help you with that. I can't break my rule even if I want to help those people."

You sigh and nod. You understand that if she breaks her code then the Zik-Chil urges that she is suppressing may come out full force. It is probably for the best she does not break her rule. You shudder at the thought of what would happen if she goes out of control. You see the Transporter come into view as she walks around the corner and you move towards her. She groans and asks "Why don't you have your stranger power up?" At you confused look she elaborates "Your disguise."

Huh. When did you stop having that up? "I didn't notice it was down, I'll just put it back up-"

"Don't do that were anyone can see you! I am in my civilian identity and don't need people connecting it with my parahuman one." She whispers angrily at you. You understand the individual words of that sentence, but you have no idea what the whole sentence meant.

The Nature Bender who had walked over as well says dryly "To late for that." and points behind her back towards the restaurant. You see several people at the windows holding talky boxes up.

The Transporter looks over and says "Motherfucker! What did you do in the ten minutes I was gone!"

The Nature Bender speaks up again "Well she released my from her master effect, had a psychotic break down in the middle of the restaurant, dropped her stranger effect, started generating lightning, and then loudly declared that she killed several people including Skidmark."

The Transporter voice came out choked "I don't even… do you not understand the idea of a secret identity!?"

"Why would I want a secret identity?" you ask confused.

They both stare at you in disbelief, before the Transporter speaks up "I have no words. Let's just get out of here, before the PRT shows up to arrest us or New Wave comes to murder us." She grabs you by the arm and drags you over to her carriage and shoves you in, before getting in herself.

She drives a few minutes before turning into alley and gets out of the carriage. "Okay we are going to have to switch cars in case anyone got our license plate. Put a disguise on us and we'll grab a different one." As you walk to the next carriage you consider what to do about the remaining Merchants.

You will have to create the spell to cure their addictions yourself. This will take some time, at least two weeks, to get done. If you leave the Merchants to their own devices for any length of time you are sure somebody will get hurt. So you are going to have to step up and take over the organization. With you holding the leash you should be able to stop them from going out of control. Hell you have were able to corral those demons under your banner after you slew that demon lord that one time, keeping a bunch of junkies in line can't be that hard. You just got to make it clear they follow your rules or kill their asses. Simple.

You turn to the Transporter and ask "Hey do we have enough surplus drugs to keep the remaining Merchants from going into withdrawal in the next two to three weeks? I think I can come up with a way to repair the damage of long time drug use and addiction, but it will take me time."

The Transporter looks thoughtful for a minute before answering you "I think if we ration them properly, we could keep the current members going for about that long. The problem would be making sure that they actually ration them."

You will just to use a firm and electrically charged hand to control them. "Since I killed the Despoiler, they should fall in line under my leadership. When I take control I will make sure that they don't do anything dumb, while simultaneously working on a cure."

The Transporter looks doubtful "How are you going to make a cure? You're not a tinker are you? Actually I have no idea what you power is. It seems to be all over the place from what I can tell."

"I am not soul-bound like you and the rest, so I don't rely on the parasites to grant me power to break reality. I am able to manipulate astral space to allow me to break the rules of reality instead. Which allows me a much more varied skill set." you explain.

"I have no idea what you just said means." she says in deadpan voice.

"Well it is like this. You were given a specific ability when you made your contract with your parasite. You are letting it use your senses to collect data and compel you towards certain behaviors and in return it gifts you with a single specialized magical power. I however was awoken to astral space allowing me to perceive and manipulate it. All of my spells are formulas that can be learned by other awakened and I can learn new ways to manipulate astral space through research." You say trying to enlighten the Transporter.

"That made even less sense." she says rolling her eyes.

You huff and say "While I can't cure drug addiction now, in two to three weeks I should be able to figure it out myself with research."

"If you say so." she says dubiously. "So you believe in magic huh?"

"Why would I not believe in magic?" you ask confused.

She snorts "Because magic is not real."

You give her an incredulous look. Really!? She does magic herself and seen you do magic, yet she does not believe in magic. "You do magic yourself. I have seen your enchanted items up close."

"That's called electricity and combustion honey. Just because you don't understand how it works does not make it magic." she says in patronizing voice.

You bristle at her tone. Does she think you are an idiot or something?! You understand how electricity and combustion works thank you very much. "I understand how things work! I can see the enchantments on things that you have made specifically, I could easily unravel them if I wanted to." you say getting angry.

"Of course you can." she says in an insincere voice. Ooooh you'll make her eat those words.

"Oh yeah why don't you show one of your tinker things and I'll prove it!" you exclaim loudly.

She pushes her hand over your mouth and hiss "Not so loud damn it. People don't know I am tinker out of costume and I would appreciate if you didn't scream it out loud." You just glare at her and then lick her hand. She yelps and retracts her hand.

She wipes her hand off on her pants and says "We don't have time for me to prove you wrong. We have to get to that meeting, remember?" You continue to glare at her and grumble under your breath, but you nod. "So how are you going to convince them to listen to you anyway?"

You consider her question for a few minutes as you walk, the voices giving you lessons on how to sway a crowd, before answering her question "The Despoiler has ruined them just like he had ruined you. When given the chance to take your life back you took it and I feel that so will they. Sure there will be some that are not interested by what I am offering, but I should be able to get the majority to see reason and join me." The Transporter give you a hesitant nod and looks uncomfortable at the reminder of the Despoiler, so you give her a hug to reassure her.

You get to the Transporter's other carriage a few minutes later and drive to the meeting spot. It appear to a large abandoned warehouse with some $ on it. "Okay we got about twenty minutes before the meeting should start. So make sure your ready" she says. You give her a thumbs up and summon the spirit of the warehouse to astral space, that way if there is trouble it can help you out. You walk around the area and make note of all the exits in case you need to make a quick escape as well.

When you walk back to where the Transporter is, you see a small pinkish goblinish looking man speaking to her. Behind him you see a three legged tan creature with tentacles and a large mouth. You wave at the Collector and the Transporter as you make your way over. You stick your hand to shake the Collector's hand and say "Hi! I'm Necros nice to meet you!" He looks surprised that you are offering your hand to him or even happy to be in the same general vicinity as him. But he manages to collect himself and in the end he does take your hand and shakes back.

He responds in a nasally voice "I'm Mush. So you the new boss then."

You nod and say "Yep and I'm going to restore the Merchants Guild back to its former glory." The Collector gives a confused look to the Transporter who merely shrugs and makes a motion with her hand that you cannot decipher.

"So you think you can cure drug addiction?" he asks trying to sound nonchalant, but you can hear the hope and desperation in voice.

"I'll figure it out. I promise." you tell him. He looks unsure but gives you a hesitant smile. Progress!

You sit there on edge of the stage, your legs swinging back and forth, as you wait for the rest of the Merchants to trickle in. You recognize some of them as the ones that you beat the shit out of and looted yesterday. When the Transporter clears her throat and motions for you to start you hop to your feet and address the crowd. "So for those that don't know I'm Necros and I became the new boss around here when I killed the Despoiler yesterday."

"She means Skidmark." The Transporter interjects interrupting your epic speech. You glare at her, but she looks completely unapologetic. You turn back to the crowd grumbling to yourself. The Transporter sure has gotten so snarky lately. You'll have to remind her manners by seducing her later.

You turn back to the crowd and begin your speech again "So as I was saying. I'm the new boss and I am taking the Merchants in new direction. The Despoiler has ground you done into his mad hedonistic image. Many of you were forced into the Merchants against your will through his vile actions and I seek to undo the damage that he has done to you. He broke you and you had to rely on him to survive in the world."

"I shall make it so that you can stand on your two feet once more and be free of his corruption. I can within the next few weeks cure you of your drug addictions and you can return to who you once were. For those of you that have nothing to return to in your old life, I shall render me aid upon them as well. You may stay under my banner for as long you as feel the need to and will be able to leave when you feel ready. I-"

"Hey bitch maybe some of us are happy with the way things are. How dare you look down on us! I am not letting some fucking teenager boss me around" yells one of the Merchants that you beat up yesterday.

"Tough shit I'm the boss and you can't stop me. I could beat the shit out of you with my eyes closed." You reply.

He draws a gun and points it at you. You promptly close your eyes and when he fires his gun you move out the way of his shot with ease. "What the fuck." you hear him shout as you make your way over to him. You can hear people scrambling to get out of the away of the fight between the two of you. He manages to get off four more shots before you are in front of him. You can hear him scrambling backwards, but you outpace him without breaking a sweat. You reach out and grab his gun and destroy it with a pulse of lightening. "Okay, okay I give!"

You open your eyes and look dead center into his eyes "I am going to save all of you even I have to drag you kicking and scream back into the light. Rejoice! For today is the first day of your rebirth." When you exam the crowd you see that many faces look hopeful, some unsure, and a few look angry but controlled by their fear of you. You hop back onto the stage and raise your hand for high five. The Transporter does not leave you hanging.

* * *

"wElL yOu CoUlD eAt ThIs." Murphy called out telekinetically hurling the primordial fruit to the girl. He hid himself as the world shifted and watched to see if she would eat it. She raised the fruit to her face, but hesitated before it reached her mouth. 'Come on eat it.' She began to lower it to her lap. 'No! Eat it damn you!' After a moment the girl brought the friut back to her mouth and took a bite. 'Yes! Yes!' Murphy burst into a giggle fit.

He watched as the girl was slowly driven mad by her mind, body and soul ever shifting. If he had a mouth he would be smiling with glee. 'Any moment now.' he thought with giddy anticipation. The girl then woke draging her out of his prison and leaving a hole in his cage that would let him to leave as well. He rushed though it before it closed. 'Freedom!' He was finally free from that blasted ever shifting prison.

He looked around and saw that he was on the material plane and burst out laughing "Ahahahahahahaha!" He started bouncing around in the air in celebration. He had gotten out that damn rat's prison, it had taken him millennia to do so, but he had done it! He was going to have so much fun! What should he do first: eat, bask in the sun, commit some genocide, read a good book? So many choices! As he floated along he noticed a human drinking liquor from a paper bag.

"Whoa I must have been drinking too much if I am seeing fairies." said the human as he looked at Murphy.

'Fairy! How dare he! I am beyond some paltry fae! All knew and fear me! Why they even named a law after me!' Murphy thought angrily.

"You want some rum Mr. Fairy?" asked the man.

Murphy decided to forgive the man his mistake since he offered him some tribute. Murphy grabbed the bottle telekinetically and poured it into his non-mouth. It had been so long since had last drank any alcohol, he forgot how delicious it was! He needed more. **MORE**. Murphy began to zoom around the city at lightning speed drinking as quickly he could. Some of the mortals tried to prevent him, but he showed them who was boss! Unfortunately after half an hour the city was completely bone dry.

He was wobbling a little as he flew around now. What to do. What to do. Hmmm. You know what always annoyed him. They call them fire stations, but they are never on fire. He should fix that. After five or so minutes his task was complete and all of the fire stations in the city were burning quite nicely.

Humming to himself he noticed a prison. Just the sight of it made his nonexistence blood boil. He should teach those vile wardens a lesson. Oh! He had just the idea. Let's see how they like to be locked up with their former prisoners being the ones holding the keys! He began to eagerly flit around the city to fulfill his new quest.

* * *

You say to the Transporter "I need to get my lodge ready so I can begin to create the spell formula that I need. Can I get some paper and ink so I can write down a list of things I will need?" She nods and then turns around to bark orders at some of your minions. After the few minutes one of them comes back and hands you some writing tools. You quickly jot done what you will need and hand the list back to your minion.

He pauses after reading your list and says "Uh boss I got bad news. You see there was this fairy thing like you know from that video game, the one that goes hey listen and shit. Anyway it kind of drank all of our alcohol then when we went to go get some more it turns out it drank all of the rest of the city's supplies as well. It's like on the news and shit."

Why gods! Why! What could you have ever done to deserve this? It's like there is some sort of curse upon you that will not let you get a single drop of holy nectar. You curl up into a ball and begin to rock back and forth. You start laughing uncontrollably. Clearly you are not upset if you laughing. The Transporter smacks you upside the head and you regain control of yourself. You will this find this fairy and destroy it for crossing you! It shall rue the day it thought it could prevent you from drinking!

"What about the rest of the things on the list, can you get them?" you say trying to sound calm, but from the way that he is flinching away from you it looks like you failed.

"I-I yeah everything else is good. Should I go get the stuff?" He asks shakily. You give him a jerky nod and he flees from your presence.

The Transporter sighs and says "Get up."

You whine "I don't wanna."

She grabs you from under your arms and pulls you to your feet. You consider just letting yourself fall down again, but the look on her face makes you rethink your decision. She hisses at you "Stop acting like a child. These people's lives depend on you and you are not taking this seriously."

Gods she is so sexy when she gets like this you just want to kiss her on the mouth. Judging from the blush on her face you may have said that aloud. She reaches over and bops you on the nose. "Bad." You splutter in indignation, but wisely choose not to argue with her. Seeing that you have decided to behave she gives you smirk. You just want to wipe off her face with your lips. Wait she is blushing again, did you talk out loud again? "Yes you did, also bad." She bops you on the nose again. Damn it!

You mutter to yourself and sulk as you wait for your minion to bring back the ingredients. When he finally arrives, you take your tools and get to work.

You pop open a can of paint and dip your hands inside of it, infusing the paint with your essence. You then began to draw on the walls with your hands using them as your brush. A wooden brush would only create a barrier between your flow of magic and the wall. The symbols come to as you as you create them, each one has some meaning to you, but the exact meaning eludes you. The splatters that you accidently created while drawing you masterpiece are part of the pattern as well. They represent the chaotic nature of your magic and of life.

As you continue your work you began to dance and sing. The song is of many colors and about the ever changing nature of reality. The building absorbs the sound your voice and the magic that is laced inside of your words. The warehouse begins to sing back to you as it becomes one with you. It thanks you for giving it life and offers you its services. The walls seem to vibrate as the sound of their song leaves them. The symbols begin to glow with magic and began to shift into various different shapes.

The shapes began to take form of people, birds, insects, mountains, seas, and many of other aspects of the earth. They all tell stories of the life of each being. Each story comes with its own song, speaking of their subject's joys, accomplishments, sorrows, struggles, of good endings and bad. When a tale ends a new story takes its place. Soon the room is filled with a chorus of individual songs that meld together perfectly, telling the story of the world itself.

The rust and the cracks that were once part of the building fade away. The walls once rough are now smooth. The dust and grim gone. The broken windows have mended themselves. The spirit of the building thanks you for restoring him to his initial state. You thank him in turn for allowing you to seek sanctuary here in his domain.

When you finally finish your work the sun has long set and you are quite tired. Your body and throat are both sore from your efforts. Most of the Merchants have already left, but those that remain watch the product of your work enraptured. Some try to sing along with the various songs, but they lack the proper vocal cords to produce the sounds that your lodge makes. The Transporter stares around the building as though she cannot believe her eyes and the Collector has fallen asleep while basking in the song of your lodge.

You walk towards the Transporter a tired smile on your face. She turns to you a dazed look in her eye. She asks "How in the world… what is this?"

You give her a smirk and say "It's magic. Duh."

"Magic isn't…" she trails off as she stares at the walls. Ha. You totally won that debate. In her face! You are about to rub it in her face when you yawn loudly. She blinks and looks at her watch before saying "We should get you to bed it is after three am." You give her tired nod and follow after her. "I talked with Oni Lee while you were doing your thing and caught him up with what is going on."

Oh good. You totally forgot to do that. She leads you into a room with a mattress and a blanket then bids you good night. As she turns to leave you grab onto her arm and pull onto the mattress with you causing her to yelp. You snuggle up to her and close your eyes. You would do more, but you are way too tired for that. You hear her sigh, but she does not say anything in protest. You eventually fall asleep to the beating of her heart and the song of your lodge.

* * *

Dragon found herself suddenly standing in Colin's quarantine room, before she promptly fell over on to her face. 'Oh god is this what pain feels like!' she mentally and physically screamed. Ow! Ow! Ow! Tears in her eyes Dragon sat up. 'Wait face?' Dragon looked down and saw a very female and naked body. 'I what?' Dragon tried to get to her feet before she fell over again being unused to having legs. Ow.

Dragon lay there on the ground trying to process what was going on. 'Okay. I was talking to Colin a second ago and now I appear to be human and in his quarantine room. I don't see Colin anywhere so that means he escaped. I need to alert the PRT that Colin got out.' Dragon pulled herself up using nearby table. 'Wow this table feels so smooth.' Dragon stood there rubbing her hands across the table savoring the sensation, before catching herself.

She walked wobbly over to the communicator on the wall and pushed the speaker button. "Helloooo? This isss Dragooon." Wow talking felt amazing: The way her vocal cords buzzed in her throat, the feeling of her mouth stretching and moving as she talked. It all felt so good. "A Mooover seems to have taaaaken Armsmaster out of quarantine and duuuumped me here."

There was no reply. Dragon sighed and put her head against the wall. The cool metal against her skin felt amazing, she could do this forever. Wait no. She needed to get to Colin before he hurt himself. Except there was no way she was getting out of quarantine without help from the outside. As she tried to figure out how to escape her situation, she noticed a buzzing at the back of her head. When she concentrated on it she felt herself being squeezed through a tube and found herself looking out of the same camera as earlier. She saw a woman lying on the ground drool coming out of her mouth. 'Is that me?'

When Dragon focused on her body she found herself back inside of it. 'Well that's handy.' She thought before jumping back to camera. She then unlocked the door and opened it, before looking through the PRT building. All the PRT employees were being held inside of the containment cells. 'What in the world?' She quickly unsealed all of them and said through the speakers "This is Dragon there appears to have been a parahuman attack on the base. Their goal appeared to have been to spring Armsmaster. I do not see any of the attackers currently in the building. Director Piggot I will meet you up with you in a minute. I am coming from the quarantine area."

She then unplugged herself from the system and returned herself to her body. She got up again and made her way towards Piggot. As she walked down a corridor she fell over again "Damn bipedal body!" she groaned. She then used the wall to pull herself up again, when a PRT agent came around the corner pointing a foam gun at her.

"Dragon?" he asked. When she nodded he spoke "Why are you naked?"

'Oh yeah' thought Dragon looking down at herself.

* * *

Mr. Nibbles hurried back to the currents host's room as quickly as he could. The soul sanctum had been beginning to unravel and he needed to fix whatever she had broken before it was too late. Unfortunately the travel time in the nexus was unreliable and right now it was working against him. He cursed vigorously as he as he moved what felt like farther away from his destination. He turned around and sprinted back towards the correct direction.

After another ten minutes of running he finally spotted her gate and picked up speed. He skidded to a stop in front of the host and started to examine her, hoping to figure out what was wrong with her. She was currently speaking in tongues and she was flopping around. Mr. Nibbles scanned her signature to see if what ailed her was spiritual and after a minute he spotted the problem. He shoved his talon into the host's throat. She started gagging and then threw up the contents of her stomach.

He looked at the purple chunks and the green juices of the primordial fruit with a grimace. The girl was rambling now about who knows what and started giggling like a loon. 'Well she lasted about a week before going insane. That is better than average.' Mr. Nibbles thought glumly. It would have been nice if anyone in here was sane beside himself, but he hadn't got his hopes up after all of these years of disappointment.

"Girl what did you do to yourself?" he asked with a sigh in his voice.

"I-I don't remember. I don't hahahaha remember who I am anymore." she said in dejected voice before she broke out into giggles. "Do you know who I am?" she asked hopefully.

"Never got your name. Sorry." he said. Her face dropped and now had a heart broken look on it. "What do you remember?"

"I remember *giggle* lots of things. That's the problem" she wailed. "I remember being so many different things I can't tell which one is me."

"Well" started Mr. Nibbles "I know that you were a female human or at least you looked like a human. You had dark brown curly hair and you were about child bearing age. So try and focus on memories that match that."

"But there are so many memories I don't know if I can." she said in a defeated voice.

"It will take awhile and a lot of work but I believe that you can do it." he lied.

"I… Okay." she said quietly.

Mr. Nibbles sat their patiently as the girl gathered her fought and began to sort through her trove of memories. After a few hours the girl spoke up "I think I have found three people who could be me. The first was a warrior. She started low in life and thought her way to the top, she desired to be the greatest and she never let anyone tell her otherwise. While she accomplished her goal she died doing so.

"The second was betrayed and broken in her youth and never managed to accomplish anything in her short life. The third was born alone and lived alone her entire life. She lived in a vast valley filled with beasts and every day was a fight for survival. She died young, but she was never unhappy."

"I personally don't know which one you are. But you can choose which one you want to be and I will then separate that one's memories from the rest. It should become your dominate personality" said Mr. Nibbles.

The girl opened her mouth and spoke.

* * *

The broken girl known as Taylor Hebert woke. She knew all along that she had been the broken one, but did not want to admit it to herself. The other two been so much larger than life and gone to do great deeds, when compared to her, made her feel like nothing. She had been so tempted to throw away her past, but the thought of her Dad held her back. He had fallen apart when he had lost Mom, if he lost her as well… Taylor didn't want to think about what he would do. So in the end she decided to be Taylor Hebert once more for her Dad.

The memories of her other lives were still there, but they no longer felt they like had been her exactly. More like she had watched them on a television and could recall the events that transpired. She could tap into her other lives anytime that she wished, but finding a specific one was much harder. She now knew more about nature and how the world worked then any living human on Earth Bet. Not that she was human anymore she was something else now, something closer to a spirit then mortal.

Right now she didn't feel like she transcended humanity, no right now she felt tired and sluggish. Her thoughts were scattered and hard to keep track of. Her movements slow. She looked up at Mr. Nibbles as he looked down at her. After another moment of silence she spoke "It worked. Thank you."

Mr. Nibbles grunted and said "You should not thank me. It is in essence my fault that this happened. I said I would be here to talk to you when you woke up and I wasn't. I would have been able to warn you that this place is dangerous. Unfortunately the seals and wards keeping the more dangerous souls from causing trouble weaken during vessel transfers and I had to deal with that. I thought I would be back in time, but the way space and time flows here caused me to be late and so you got hurt."

Taylor accepted his apology since he seemed to at least mean it. "Weren't there things you wanted to tell me?"

"Yeah. But from my perspective it's been two months and I barely remember what we talked about." He groused. "God I hate it in here. But somebody got to keep this train wreck from destroying the multiverse and I am unfortunately the only one sane enough to do it."

Taylor paled and shrieked "What the fuck is in here!?"

"Ugh so many fucking things: several dozen insane mages, a few fae, some elementals, a handful of gods, several eldritch abominations, an elder god, things I don't even know the name of, and a sheep. And I got to make sure they don't undo reality. Let me tell you that fucking sheep came so close to doing just the last time." he ranted.

"I don't even…" Taylor said.

"Look just tell me what you do know and I can try to fill in what you need to know. Just thinking about my lot in life pisses me off" he said.

"Um I was possessed by some mages who were using multidimensional stuff that went wrong or something. I need to get drunk to focus, but I am cursed so I can't do that. Some of the people here do not have my best interest at heart and the ones that do are insane. Uh that is all I can think of." she listed.

Mr. Nibbles nodded as he listened along "Well that sounds right more or less. Do you know what spells you can currently cast or how to use your currently abilities?"

"Sort of. I can do some things, but I don't know what all I can do." Taylor responded.

"Right so you can summon air, earth, water, fire, and human spirits. You know how to do that?" seeing her nod he continued "You also have a danger sense that helps you subconsciously dodge things and your reflexes about three times as fast as a normal human.

"I can also see in your aura that you are able to cast several spells even if you are unaware of them: You can generate lightening from your hands, as bolts, or as balls, create fields around you to deflect damage, create illusionary disguises that cover all the senses and turn you invisible, clean and color objects, change your shape in to animals, and heal wounds." he continues. "Is there anything else you want to know?"

"So about this curse, I need to drink so I can focus better, so breaking it is a priority." Taylor said. Actually now that she thought about alcohol her mouth started to water. Her thoughts drifted off as she fantasized about various kinds of booze she could be drinking. Past her was a fool for never understanding the true greatness of all things booze. Really the whole focus thing was a side bonus, compared to the actually being able to drink.

Mr. Nibbles was snapping his paw in front of her face causing her to focus on him. "Now that I got your attention, breaking the curse is no easy thing. But all truly powerful curses have to have escape clauses and this one is no exception. You will need to get your hands on the flesh of a fallen star, tears of a dragon, and the bones of a nightmare."

"None of things exist on Earth Bet!" Taylor said outraged. No! She would never be able to drink. She would die an alcohol virgin.

"Shit." said Mr. Nibbles. After a moment he spoke again "Well things like this tend to be metaphorical so you can kind of finagle it a little. It does not literal have to be tears of a dragon it could jus bet something that is widely considered a dragon or dragon like by people. For instance if there was dragon shaped rock with a water fall falling over its side would work."

Great that sounds like it will be a huge pain the ass to figure out, but on the other hand so totally worth it. "Is there any magical skills you think you could teach me? I need all the help I can get to keep me alive."

"I am not really a mage to be honest. The things I do know about are mostly wards and seals, since I need them to keep this place spinning. These take hours to cast in general and tend to be defensive in nature. I could show you the basics in that if you want. I also know how to quicken which is the ability to permanently bind a spell to your soul, that way you wouldn't have to concentrate to turn it on. The only way to end the effect is to forcefully end the spell which causes some minor strain to your soul, much like the strain you would get from the rapid learning in here."

"One thing I need to learn is how to cure drug addiction, since awake me needs to figure out how to do that to save a couple hundred people. Do you have any idea how I would go about doing that?" Taylor asked.

Mr. Nibbles said "Healing magic is not really my thing to be honest. Like I said my focus is more on wards and seals. Although…" he paused drifting off into thought. Taylor sat there waiting for him to speak for about minute before he spoke again "I know a ritual that would create a zone that would stave off the effects of withdrawal and slowly fix the damage that was done to them overtime. The process will take days to finish and you would have to set up several zones repeatedly."

He continued "I could teach you the basics of ritual magic and the healing ritual if you want or quickening since that is all your soul can handle right now."

"As useful as quickening sounds I need to learn ritual magic right now. People need my help and I can't leave them to suffer when I could have helped them." said Taylor.

Mr. Nibbles nodded and said "Very well then hold still." He then reached out and grabbed Taylor in his paw and she felt warm feeling spread throughout her body. It steadily got hotter and hotter until it became unbearable. It felt like she was going to explode at any moment when it finally stopped. Her body still felt like it was still on fire, but it seemed to be slowly cooling down.

She stood there gasping for breath for a minute, before she began to examine her new memories. She went over the process of how to perform rituals. First she needed to be inside her lodge to cast a ritual, which she fortunately had just created today. Next she then had to designate who was going to assist her in the ritual. Unfortunately no one she knew could help in the casting, meaning she could not put too much power into it or she would lose control of the ritual. The more time she put into performing the ritual the more power she could push into it.

She then went over the ritual that she was given. When completed it would create sphere that would temporarily remove the effects of drug abuse and accelerate the bodies recovery from long term drug use. If they left the sphere then they would only be at starting stages of withdrawal. So when the effect of withdrawal became too much for them they just needed to reenter the sphere. It would take a few days but they would be able to overcome their addiction without going through the most difficult parts of recovery.

"You get what you need?" asked Mr. Nibbles.

"Yeah I should be able to handle it. Thank y-" began Taylor but stopped when the feeling of her entire body rippled hit her. She lost her footing and she fell over. She felt a sharp pain at the top of her head and at her back. She felt something pressing against the back of her shirt and she could see her arms and hands sliming and shrinking quickly for about a second. When she got back to her feet she noticed that she had shrunken a whole foot. "What the fuck! What did you do!" she shouted angrily.

"Nothing. This is a side effect from the fruit that you ate. It looks like your body and soul couldn't handle your transformation into one of the fae all in one go. It seems that you recovered enough for you to continue your evolution now though." he said.

"Wait what do you mean turning into fae? Are you saying I am not human anymore!?" she shrieked.

"Yep. Looks like your turning into some sort of pixie judging by the wings and antenna, but you could be something else entirely for all I know." he replied.

Oh god she was no longer human. What did she do to herself?! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! "Am I going to keep changing?" said Taylor trying to keep the panic out her voice.

"I have no idea. I couldn't even really tell you what type you are, since fae vary wildly dimension to dimension." he said completely unconcerned.

"Don't you have anything helpful to say." She said hysterically. Oh god what was going to happen to her?

"Hmmm don't stick weird shit in your mouth." he said sagely with a nod.

"That is not helpful!" she screamed.

"Well if you had done that you wouldn't be here now would you? So I am going to have to disagree." he said in deadpan voice.

"You're the worst!" Taylor yelled before waking up.


	5. Day 8

You wake up spooning the Transporter with her hair inside of your mouth. It looks like you have been chewing on it in you sleep. You are embracing her tighter and pecking the back of her neck gently, when you notice that your clothes feel weird. It is like you are drowning in them. Your arms and legs don't even make their way out of your clothes anymore. Also the back of your shirt feel tight and your back is feels weird and extremely uncomfortable. You let go of the Transporter and sit up, something odd is going on here.

You then spend a couple of minutes struggling out of your clothes. Taking off your shirt turns out to be more painful then you anticipated. First when you pull it up off your back it catches on something sticking out of your back and it sent a sharp pain throughout your body. Then when you got it over your head it caught on something else and once again gave you a shock of pain. When you finally get your god damn shirt off, you crane your neck to look behind you and see a pair butterfly wings. The left one is white with a black skull on it and the one on the right is black with a white skull.

You are pretty sure that you didn't have wings before, although you never did pay that much attention to your back before, so maybe? The Transporter would know for sure. She is much better at remembering these things then you are, so you should wake her up and ask. You lean over and kiss her on the mouth just like in the stories. That is how you are supposed to wake up your love when they are stuck in a deep sleep, right? Her eyes immediately shoot open and she jerks back in surprise. Well it kind of worked, she woke up, but she was supposed to lean into the kiss not away from it.

"What the- why do you have wings and antenna!? Why are you naked?!" she blurts out.

Oh was that was on your head? You guess that makes sense since butterfly's have antenna as well as wings, you would as well. Well judging from her reaction your wings are new so that means you are not crazy. Yep. "No idea!" you chirp "Well except for the naked thing, my clothes were too big and were hurting my wings." You then give her a sly grin "Since you've seen me naked it is only fair I see y-" She reaches over and bops you on the nose causing you to flail around a little.

"Bad. Wait are you smaller then you used to be? Stand up a sec." You grumble and stand up. The Transporter now towers above you when just yesterday you were taller than her. No fair. Do you know how hard it is to be sexy instead of adorable when you are this small? Your small chest sure is not helping you there either. "God damn it." she says "Even in your fucking sleep you somehow manage to cause me problems. It's a good thing you have a stranger power or else you would never be able to go outside without being recognized instantly. Wait here I am going to get someone to fetch you clothes that fit."

After a bit she comes back with a few sets of clothes and hands them to you, before heading out of the room again. The shirts have large slits roughly cut into the back. After a few minutes you manage to find a pair that fits properly. When you exit the room she looks you up and down before saying "What is it with you and skulls?"

"Skulls are symbols of friendship, so people know how friendly I am just by looking at me. It helps put them at ease" you explain.

She gives you an exasperated look for some reason. She shakes her head and says "So you are working on your lodge thing today?"

"Maybe. I actually came up with a solution already." you say.

"What? When? I thought you said it would take a couple weeks." she asked confused.

"It came to me in dream, like all great ideas do." you say. You then explain to her the ritual that you could use to help fix everybody. It takes a few minutes and she interrupts a few times to ask questions, but by the end you think she gets your explanation.

She considers your idea for a minute, before nodding and saying "That sounds like it would work. How long till your first field is up?"

"It should be about three hours unless I mess it up somehow, but I think today I will power up my lodge first." you say.

"Is there anything you would like me to go make the other do while you do your thing?"

You consider her question before saying "Spread the word to have everyone gather here tomorrow afternoon so I can start the process of curing their addictions. Have everyone that wishes to be cured bring in their drugs as well. If they don't wish to be cured then they can leave the Merchants." If they want to stay addict you're not going to fight them on it, but you are also not interested in having those kinds of people working under you.

She nods and leaves while you head to the main chamber to work on your lodge. When you enter the room you find several Merchants examining your previous day's work. As you walk over to your bags of crafting supplies, one of your followers says "Hey this music is the shit, you should record it and make an album or something. We could make a lot of money selling it."

"Hey my music is not shit!" you say angrily. How dare he! You should carve off his ears for his insolence.

"No it is the shit, not shit. You get what I am saying?" he says. You have no idea what he is saying.

"So the shit is good?" you ask confused.

He nods vigorously "Yeah. Just listening to it makes me feel more alive, it's like a whole another kind of high."

You guess that's good? "What's an album?" you ask. If it helps you make many that's always good thing.

He blinks at you before saying "You know like a recording of a group of songs." At your blank look he pulls out a box out of his pocket. Attached to the box is some string. "You put this in your ears." You shrug and do as he says. To your surprise you hear singing coming from the string. It is a bit loud for your taste, but it is a song about butts so you approve on principle. This magic song string is pretty neat.

"So you want to put my music in this and sell it?" you ask.

"People will line up to buy this, trust me." he says.

"So you can make an album?" you ask.

"No but I know a guy that can do it. He is going to want money to make it for us, but we would make a shit load of money off of this." he says.

All this different shits are confusing the shit out of you. You can only assume a shit load is a large amount, which does not make that much sense to be honest, since shits are honestly not that big, when compared to other things like dragons. Although dragon shits are pretty big.

Well you got to spend money to make money and it would be cool if people listened to your music on their magic strings, so why not. "Be right back!" You jump into the air and start flapping your wings, but you don't manage to keep yourself in the air and instead face plant spectacularly. Ow. Damn you gravity! It is always trying to ruin your day. Well you are not going to let it boss you around. "You okay Boss?" you hear the Shit Man say. You give him a thumbs up and get back to your feet.

Okay let's try this again. You began to flap your wings vigorously before jumping this time and manage to stay off the ground. 'Yes! Take that gravity, you can suck my dick!' It thought that it could keep you down, but you are indomitable like the mighty tarrasque. You do a few loops through the main chamber to get used to flying then you head over to the room that you were sleeping in earlier and grab your duffel bag of loot.

You quickly return to the Shit Man and show him the inside of your loot bag. "Is this enough? It's four thousand something."

"Yeah that should be enough to get him to come over. All go see if I can talk to him today." he says while picking up the bag. You wave goodbye as he heads out.

Well time to get to work, your lodge is not going to power itself up. You start rummaging through your bag of crafting tools looking for today's supplies. You pull out a few rolls of white string, glue and several cans of different colored paint. You some spend time infusing the paint with your essence before unwinding the string and dipping it into a can.

You fly up close to the ceiling and began to glue the ends of the strings to different walls. You send several hours flitting about creating your web, taking breaks every once and a while due to your new wings getting tired. When you take your breaks you sit and chat with your people. Your conversation tend to be rambly and one sided, but you don't think that they mind too much. You eventually run out of string and you fly back to the ground to examine your work.

Hundreds of different colored crisscrossed strings hang above you creating an image of a sun with a blue sky as a background. Clouds of various shapes speckle the sky. As you watch your new creation you can slowly see the sun inching its way over to the west. Some of the clouds drift off your piece as new clouds comes onto your sky. You began to plan out the next step when your stomach rumbles, time for a lunch break.

* * *

Rebecca Costa-Brown stared at the report sitting in front of her, trying to will it into inexistence. Unfortunately for her the paper refused to obey her wishes. Apparently some case 53 was on a drunken bender across North America. It was drinking every single last drop of alcohol that it came across. It had started in Brockton Bay and had been making its way south-west ever since. It was currently being reported that it was active in Indiana. Every town that it had hit reported seeing the same thing, a bright yellow ball with wings, zooming about and pounding away all the liquor that they had.

It apparently was granting wishes to any unfortunate soul that spoke with it, leaving chaos in its wake. In New York while a school on a field trip at a local museum a child voice the desire that the dinosaurs were still alive. It had been a blood bath. In a city in Pennsylvania a girl asked for a herd of unicorns. When the PRT tried to round them up they went berserk and started goring the soldiers and were now running around the city unchecked. In North Virginia some idiot apparently asked for a million bucks and now the city was flooded with male deer causing traffic accidents everywhere. So on and so forth.

As she continued to read the never ending reports of damage she could feel her headache growing, when her phone started ringing. "Director Costa-Brown." she said.

"This is Director Hortan." Rebecca held in a groan. Hortan was the director of the Indianapolis, Indiana. "The Slaughter House Nine had recently surfaced here today and have just been driven out."

'What?' Rebecca blinked. Usually the Nine stayed in a city longer than that before they left. "How did you drive them out?" she asked part of her dreading the answer.

"They apparently were hunting Mouse Protector for sport when that case 53 that is rampaging across the country ran into her."

Rebecca had to stop herself slamming her head through her desk before she ground out "What happened?"

"Apparently it asked Mouse Protector what she was doing and she responded 'I am talking a casual walk with my friends since my life is apparently not in enough danger.' So it said 'Oh I can fix that. Make sure you cross the river before they get you.' That's when a giant army of spectral huntsmen and their dogs showed up and started to chase all the S9 as well as Mouse Protector. Fortunately Mouse Protector managed to cross the river, we are unsure how many of the S9 survived, but Crawler is confirmed dead." Horton reported.

Rebecca rubbed the bridge of her nose and spoke "Try and see who you can confirm survived whatever the case 53 did and get back to me." After Horton hung up Rebecca hit the button on her phone that redirected her calls to her body double and then said "Door me."

When she got to the meeting room she saw that Number Man, Contessa, and Doctor Mother were already there. When she sat down she spoke "The new parahuman code name Discord is currently in Indianapolis, were it attacked and managed to drive of the Slaughterhouse Nine by itself. It apparently created a projection of an army and had them hunt down the Nine." she paused before speaking "It isn't one of ours is it?"

Doctor Mother shook her head "We did not create it no. We do however have a theory." she then motioned to Number Man.

He then spoke "Recently there was a video of a parahuman name Necros in Brockton Bay claiming to have been experimented on by some group. She seems to be mutating at rapid rate and has been shown to be mentally unstable much like those that did not drink a whole vial. Brockton Bay is also the same place that Discord originated from in fact so we are pretty sure that they are connected somehow. We have several unaccounted for vials over the years so we believe that some group was experimenting with them and produced Necros and Discord."

"What do we plan on doing about this?" asked Rebecca.

"About Discord and Necros? Nothing. Discord has been causing a large amount of trigger events do its actions and with no parahuman deaths, which makes him more useful to us then the S9. As for Necros, she is not a problem and if she becomes one, we can easily deal with her." For some reason Rebecca felt a pit of dread in her stomach. "However this group that created them needs to be hunted down and killed." replied Doctor Mother.

* * *

Nom Nom Nom. You relish the salty goodness of the food in your mouth as you take another bite out of this burger thing that somebody got you. While this city is pretty terrible all around what with the skinists, the anti-booze police, and asshole dragons, the food is pretty amazing which almost makes this whole ordeal worth it. You take another sip of your drink, you have no idea what this brown fizzy liquid is but it tastes great. You were at first pretty disappointed that it wasn't alcohol, okay you are still feeling down about that to be honest. You lick the remaining traces of food of your fingers and finish your drink before standing up, time to get back to work.

You walk over to your bag and pull out several different colored sheets of paper, scissors and glue. You began to fold, cut and paste the various pieces of paper together, making them into different species of birds. As you do your work your magic begins to leak into the paper and the colors and texture began to change into the birds' corresponding plumage.

After about two hours you have made your way through half of your stack when you see the Shit Man has come back with somebody else. The second man is carrying a large duffel bag with him. He meanders his way through your lodge, looking around it with a look of interest as he takes in your work, moving in your direction.

When they reach you the Shit Man says "Hey Boss this is Tyrone. He said he was willing to help make the album for you."

Tylenol smiles and says "This art project you're working on is crazy amazing. I can't wait to get started. I am just going to record the music for awhile and then edit it together into an album. Cool?"

You give him a smile and say "Thank you and go ahead! I am just going to work on this if you have any questions just let me know."

He nods eagerly and says "Well I am going to look around and get to recording then." before wandering off.

When you finally run out of your stacks of paper you began to sing to your various paper birds. They began to wake up and start hopping around you, chirping and squawking in greeting. The tempo of your song picks up and the birds start flapping their wings and take off. You watch as your various creations fly about your lodge, some them perching on your sky strings or on the people milling around. As you listen to them mimicking your song Tyrant walks back over "Hey your singing voice is amazing, do you think I could get a couple of songs for the album?"

You puff up with pride at his compliment. It is always nice when someone appreciates your singing voice. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy. You consider his request, what should you sing for him? You know so many songs it is hard to choose. Hmmm. Oh! You know the first one for sure. The tune that you use to center yourself is a good one. It focuses one's mind and drains away negative emotions, so it is useful and makes you feel good, absolutely no downside what so ever. "Yeah I got just the song."

He holds up some sort of mace thing and says "Here, just sing into this." He then hands it over to you. Since everyone is going to be hearing this you better put your A game into this. You open your mouth and pour your very soul into your words, several of the voices ceases their chatter and join in adding their own presence to your song. You can feel the effects of the song take hold of you immediately. The frustration at the lack of booze, your failures with the Nature Bender, the worry that you may not be able to save your minions from themselves and many other fears that plague you all melt away into nothingness.

The flow of your magic quickens, moving like a rapid stream throughout your body and your tattoos pulse with power, following with the rhythm of the music. As you continue to sing you feel more and more of the voice joining in with you, the strength and power of your song growing. The many birds around your lodge began to start mimicking your song and the stories on the walls back you up as well. The occupants of the building are now cocooned within your tune. After a few minutes you wind down and look up. "Umm so was that good?" you ask nervously, you don't know what the music in is like in this place, so you hope that you can hold up to their standards.

Typer's mouth is hanging open. He takes a minute before he is able to compose himself "I… I have never heard anything like that before. Yeah it was definitely good in fact, that was the most beautiful thing I ever heard. " You blush at his praise, but it really is not that great to be honest, some of the voices are much better singers then you could ever hope to be. He asks hesitantly "Uh so you got another?"

You rack your brain for another song, before remembering the first song you ever heard. When you first woke and your mind was filled with nothingness there had been song playing in your head, that until this moment you had forgotten. With a nod you began to sing again. As the words began to leave your mouth you understand everything: The nature of reality, the rules of magic, what lies behind death's doors and so many great mysteries. You can no longer see your lodge or the people inside of it.

Instead you behold all of creation in its majesty. You can feel your soul stretching and spreading across all of reality. This time all of the voices join you in the singing of the song. This is the song that ties all life together, great and small. As you continue you can feel the eyes of things beyond reality turning in your direction examining you. They are beyond your comprehension, so you ignore them or else you would shatter. You have to stop singing at this point and when you do your lodge and its occupants returns to you.

Your legs lose their strength and you fall to your knees and you are panting for breath. Typhoon is looking at you with concern and says "Hey you okay?"

"Y-yeah. Did you see that to?" you ask.

"See what? You started singing and seemed to zone out for a bit while you sang. It was a nice song and all, but nothing like last time. You sure you are okay?" he says confused.

"I'll be fine. I'm just going to lay on the ground for a minute." you say.

* * *

"Were do you think are going?" Carol said. She watched as Amy froze at the front door, like a deer caught in headlights.

A range of emotions flashed across Amy's face before settling on guilt. She shuffled her feet and said "I just thought that the hospital might need-"

"You are not going out today and that is final." declared Carol firmly. "And you are most definitely not going back there again anytime soon, especially by yourself." She had ripped the hospital director a new one for having such incredibly lax security. The fact that some parahuman was able to waltz in and master **his** daughter was unacceptable.

"But what if someone-" she started to argue before Carol cut her off again.

"No Amy. Where is Victoria anyway? I thought she was keeping an eye on you." She asked her voice filled with suspicion. Was the master effect reemerging and trying to get Amy out of the house? Did Amy do something to her daughter?

If anything Amy's face looked even guiltier as she spoke "She fell asleep. She was tired from staying up all last night with me. I uh did not want be a bother and wake her up. Look the hospital needs me. I really should go help out."

Carol gave her an unimpressed look and said "The hospital was able to run before you got your power and it will be able to run fine without them now." Amy moved away from the door with a defeated air to her. She shuffled over to a nearby couch a plopped down. Carol watched **his** daughter curled up on the coach looking off into space a lost look in her eyes. The look on her face reminded her of some distant memory that she could not place. "This has nothing to do with the hospital needing you, does it?" Carol asked.

Amy had startled look on her face, but did not say anything so Carol continued "When I am having trouble with… things, I found that throwing myself into my work helped me take my mind off my problems."

Amy gave hesitant nod before speaking "I just can't think about what happened without feeling betrayed and I can't understand why. I mean I didn't really know or trust her so there should be nothing to betray, but when she had me under her control I was so happy and I even now I want that feeling again. I'm disgusting" She stopped talking and started to cry. Carol felt a chill at those words, which brought back unpleasant memories of her own past.

This Necros had taken control of her and made Amy love her and the way Amy described the sensation had been disquieting similarity to what had happened to her. Now she remembered were she had seen that face before, it had been on herself when she looked in the mirror after what had happened all those years ago. A white hot rage filled her. How dare Necros make her remember _him_ and even worse make some else feel the same sick feeling that followed Carol all her life. Carol stood up and moved over to Amy, she then hugged **her** daughter.

* * *

Enough lying around you got shit to do. You hop back to your feet and turn to Tyr and ask "So was that all you needed then to make the album?"

"Yeah, I got a couple of hours of music from the… whatever you call this." he says waving around at your lodge "With those two songs you gave me I got more than enough material. So I got to edit it down to maybe an hour or so. Probably take me a few days, but then I will post it on a protected music site that can't be taken down by the PRT."

Why would the anti-booze police be trying to stop you from spreading your music?! Whatever their reason you are sure that it is heinous. Really does their evil know no bounds! You should probably destroy them after you take care of these gangs for the sake of the people. Maybe then this city will finally know peace. "Thanks for all the hard work." you say giving him your biggest smile.

He says his goodbyes and heads out. You then sit in a crossed leg pose and begin to meditate. You feel the ebb and flow of the magic of your lodge and you began to meld with it. You lose yourself in the feeling of warmth and power. You and the lodge are one, you see and feel what it sees and feels. You spend time examine your men and women as they mill about the warehouse.

You spot the Transporter entering the building at some point and you send a macaw over to greet her. It perches on her shoulder, bobs its head and squawks "Hey sexy lady." You see her snort in amusement and shake her head in exasperation. She makes her way over to you and plops down next to you.

"So you almost done for today?" she asks.

The macaw does a little dance on her shoulder and squawks "Almost done. Almost done." causing the Transporter to giggle.

"God, you are such a goof." she says rolling her eyes.

Goof? You can't think of anything you have done that can be considered silly. You are always super serious about everything that you do, so you can't imagine why anyone would think that you are goofy. You decide that the Transporter is being silly and so put such ridicules thoughts out of your mind and instead focus on your task.

After about another hour the magic of the lodge stabilizes and becomes permanent. You open your eyes and stretch your body, before standing up. You got a couple of hours before you are going to turn in, so you consider what you want to do.

While chillaxing with your friends would be great you can also squeeze in some more work towards helping your minions before you go to bed. You weigh the pros and cons of each before deciding to set up a healing field before you conk out. You give the Transporter a once over, taking in her curves and let a sigh of defeat. If only you weren't so reasonable and responsible you could have been tapping that ass sometime tonight. Oh well you can always finish your seduction of the Transporter later.

You stifle a yawn and tell the Transporter "I am going to set up healing circle for the people already here to sleep in. The sooner we began the process the better." She nods sleepily and watches you as set about your task. You make your way over to your bag o' stuff and start fishing out the ritual supplies that you will need.

You take some paint and walk over to a bare patch on the floor. You dip your hand in the bucket and make a twenty foot wide circle on the ground. You double check your work to make sure the circle is perfectly symmetrical, if anything is off the whole thing will collapse. Once you are done inspecting the circle you move on to the next step. You draw in the necessary symbols around and inside the circle. Each one will be directing the flow of the magic once the ritual starts so if you get it wrong you may explode, or was it implode? Well either is bad so you make sure to be careful as you paint. It slow and hard work but you manage to get it done after only an hour.

You skip back over to your bag and pull out some barley and hops as reagents for the ritual. You place them in the designated spots marked by the runes of sacrifice. You shed a tear for the beer that they shall never be, it breaks your heart but their sacrifice is for the greater good. You began to sing a song of passing: of life, of time, of pain. The circle glows brightly and the barley and hops are devoured by the circle, may they rest in peace. The circle begins to pulse and the symbols spin around the inside of the circle.

As your song picks up speed the glow of the circle becomes brighter and the runes spin faster and faster. As you reach the climax of your song the circle pulls on your essence and you feel a violent pulse in your body. The paint burns away at the ground and leaves scorch marks which glow blindingly bright. After another minute the circle dims to a soft glow and you can see on the astral plane that the sphere of healing has stabilized. Successes! You inform the people that are still awake that they should sleep in the circle so the healing can began.

Exhausted you make your way over to Transporter who has nodded off some time during your ritual. You sit down next to her and then lean against her before closing your eyes and falling asleep.

* * *

Taylor sat up and stretched her arms. Wait is she really stretching her arms? This is all in her head or soul right? Was there any point to doing that? Fuck it. She was way to sober to deal with this. She stood up, her movements sluggish and looked around her room. Mr. Nibbles wasn't here, figures. She then started as she noticed that her room was different. It matched the lodge that Necros was building. It must have been like this last time she was awake, but she had been distracted and had not noticed. It really was quite pretty and the music pleasant.

Well Taylor was just going to sit here and enjoy the ministrations of her lodge. She learned her lesson about exploring this place, tis bad news. She leaned against a wall and tried to relax, but after ten minutes she was bored out of her mind. No matter how much she tried to relax she could not shake the jittery feeling that plagued her. She started to fly around her room to keep herself entertained, but the enjoyment from the sensation of flight only lasted a few minutes before the novelty wore off. Gods she need to go and do something she couldn't take this any longer.

She looked over at the abyss that was just outside of her lodge and a feeling of longing grew in her chest. She really shouldn't, but she was so bored. She started to inch closer to the door way as she argued with herself. 'Maybe I could meet someone neat and make a new friend. What like last time? It was dangerous here, remember last time? Yeah but there could be treasure! Maybe even shiny things! She was no longer human! What if something even worse happened? These wings are pretty cool though. Maybe next time I could get a tail. That would be sweet.' She found herself at the door way and hesitated for a second, before the thought of the possibility of finding booze, erased all doubt. 'Besides this room was boring anyway.'

She once again entered the abyss and listened to the songs being sung around her. Once again two new voices had joined the chorus. The first song was simple thumbing beat. As she focused on it she felt her heart began to match the rhythm of the song. Her blood began to sing along with the song. She felt her mouth began to water as a desire for something grew inside of her.

The second song was about nothingness and nonexistence. Well to say it was a song was kind of inaccurate. It was more like there was presence that was in fact was not there at all and made no sound, instead a deep silence that stood out from the other silences. As she listened to it she began to ponder whether she had ever in fact ever existed in the first place.

'I should go see Rana' thought Taylor. She was kind of a friend and it would nice to have friends again. Oni Lee and Squealer weren't really her friend and as much as Necros's friends. Would they even like her? Nobody else seemed to like her. If she ever came out they would probably stop being her friends and hate her for getting rid of Necros. Great now she was feeling depressed, she needed a drink so bad.

After a few minutes she found herself in front of Rana's doorway. She flew in and looked around. Unfortunately Rana was not at the center desk like last time. Taylor's antennae and wings drooped. Was she hiding from Taylor? Why did no one want to be her friend? Ooooo what is that! She flew over to the desk and flipped through the notes eagerly hoping to find something neat.

She actually understood a lot more this then she thought she would. She sat there reading them with growing interest. The spell in the notes looked like it was some form of telekinetic attack that was designed to hurl the target away from the caster, but it pushed only the spine of the target away while pulling the rest of the body forward, causing to spine to fly out of the rectum. So cool!

Unfortunately it was half completed so Taylor would have to finish it herself if she wanted to use it. Maybe Rana would be so impressed she would want to be her friend or maybe even tolerate her! She enthusiastically tried to figure out the numbers and logistics needed to get the spell to work. She giggled at the thought of the face the person face when they got hit by this! Suddenly Taylor stopped and stared at horror at the spell in front of her. What the hell was wrong with her!?

She dropped the pen like it was on fire and scrambled away from the desk. Was it the room that was making her act this way? Was it because she was no longer human? Was she going crazy? Taylor curled up into ball and let out a moan of despair. Terrified to even touch anything in case it set off another one those manic fits, she just lay there. After a few minutes she heard footsteps coming from behind her and a voice spoke out "Hey whatcha doing on the ground for? You drop something?"

"I'm a monster." mumbled Taylor.

"Um okay? Are you saying monsters belong on the ground? Because that sounds racist and that is not cool." said Rana.

"I…" began Taylor before trailing off. She really had no response to that. Lay there in silence for a minute before asking "Are we friends?"

"Sure!" Rana said and the added as an afterthought "Well as long as you stop being racist."

Taylor sprung to her feet and hugged Rana for dear life "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I missed having friends."

"There there?" Rana said uncertainly as she patted Taylor on the back. "Not to be rude or anything, but was there something you wanted?"

Taylor righted herself and started to bounce around the room before she eagerly said "Well I was bored and since were friends I thought we could do stuff or something."

"Well I am working on this spine spell do you want to do that?" asked Rana.

Taylor cringed and said "I don't feel confident in magical knowledge to do that. Maybe you could teach about magical stuff first?"

"Sure! What do want to know." she said.

Taylor paused before considering what her questions would be then spoke "I uh recently changed into some sort of fae. I don't know what kind of fae I am now or what kind of changes there are to my body or mind. Do you think you could help?"

Rana hummed in thought before answering "That one is quite the doozy. Fae are pretty inconsistent from universe to universe. Sometimes they are just another race of humanoids or they could be god like creatures beyond mortal comprehension. Some are allowed to lie, while others lack the ability to. So the only real way to figure anything out about you is to do testing!" Her demeanor suddenly changed as she perked up and her eyes start to sparkle with an eager and hungry edge to them.

The thought of experimenting also filled Taylor with glee. Oooo she couldn't wait to see what she could discover about herself. Rana ran off and yelled over her shoulder "Wait here I'll go get some things!" After a few minutes Rana came rushing back with a box in her arms. She dropped the box on the desk and sat down, bouncing in her seat eagerly.

"Okay first things first! What have you observed about yourself that is different from before?" Rana asked excitedly.

Taylor pondered the question before listing the various changes "Well I am shorter, have wings, and antennae now. I can create glamour's or something. I get easily bored, have rapid mood swings and crave alcohol. Oh and apparently I get excited about experimenting now."

Rana wrote down all the information rapidly before saying "I don't think that last thing is a fae thing."

Taylor asked confused "Then where did it come from?"

"Well when I gave you my memories of course, duh. I mean when we melded our souls, did it not occur to you that you would gain some of my personality right?" she said as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

Taylor was mentally screaming, but managed to keep calm. She so did not want to get her spine ripped out of her butt. "Why didn't you tell me that before you did the soul merge last time?" she said forcing her voice to be even.

Rana blinked and said "You didn't ask."

Taylor started banging her head on the table causing Rana to yelp "Hey careful you'll knock my papers over."

Taylor briefly considered doing it again just to spite her, but decided against it. She liked her eyeballs right where they were. "So fae stuff" she ground out.

"Right here hold this" Rana said holding out a rough metal orb.

Taylor picked it up and screamed in pain, immediately dropping it. "What was that!" she asked cradling her hand.

Rana did not look up from her scribbling and said "Wrought iron. Some fey are allergic to it, some have resistance to other kinds of metals and iron ignores it. Here take this." This time the metal orb she held up was much smoother.

Taylor careful reached over and poked it. This time she just felt a sensation of discomfort, but it did not hurt at all. "It feels bad, but not much else."

"Seems right to me. That is steel. The more refined the iron the less it will hurt. Anyway I have more ideas…" Over the next ten minutes Rana and Taylor went through several more tests, before Rana announced "Done." Then she started to list off what they had discovered so far "You have a notice me naught field that you can put on yourself and few others. You are allergic to iron. If you don't drink booze you will be low energy. You are easily distracted and like shiny things. You feel emotions much stronger so you will switch from one to another quickly and intensely. As fae go you are pretty weak, so I am pretty sure you are a pixie."

"Good to know, thanks. So I ran into somebody dangerous the other day, do you know what places are safe here and which ones are dangerous?" asked Taylor.

"Not really." she said with a shrug.

"Care to elaborate." Taylor asked annoyed.

"I can't leave this room and haven't been able to leave since I stopped being the host. Every time we transfer dimensions we gain people and it has been several thousand years since I gave up control so I have no idea what is in here anymore." she explained.

"Well who was dangerous when you could move around?" Taylor said and then in afterthought "Wait if you can't leave then why is Mr. Nibbles sealing people up?"

"Well to the second question I could leave if I really wanted to, but it would damage your soul and could kill you, and that would just be rude." she said. "To your first question um let me think it has been so long… okay avoid anything to with blood and elder gods they are just bad news. If somebody offers to buy your soul say no and don't put weird shit in your mouth."

Taylor would protest all of that was super obvious except she had totally put weird shit in her mouth. Sighing she decided to describe the songs she had heard to Rana, maybe she would recognize them. Rana listened patiently before answering "Well, stay away from the one that makes your blood sing that one is obviously bad. I have no idea why you would ever go to the despair one unless you are some sort of masochist. The other three don't sound any warning bells to me, but you should probably be careful if you visit them."

That honestly was not that helpful, but whatever. Taylor considered asking Rana to teach her something like centering again, but seeing as last time Rana had permanently altered her mind maybe that was not a great idea. Well it couldn't hurt to ask what Rana could teach and then decide if it was worth it or not. "Last time you said you could teach me things once my soul recovered, so I was wondering what you could show me."

Rana replied "Well not a lot because it looks like your soul as been through the wringer since we last talked. But I could power up your tattoos some more. Most of them are still dormant. I could probably teach you some spells or rituals. Or maybe just help you out with spellcasting technique, yours is pretty sloppy"

Taylor let an indignant yelp and said offended "My spellcasting is not sloppy!" Wait since when did she even care about things like that?

Rana snorted and rolled her eyes "Please. Come back and say that when you can level a city in ten seconds, because I totally can"

Taylor pouted and sulkily said "Man I wish I could level a city." Wait no she didn't! What is wrong with her! Taylor began to curl up into a ball again and started to hyperventilate.

Rana looked at her confused "Hey why are freaking out now?"

"I keep thinking and saying things that I would never say before. I think I am going insane." Taylor whimpered.

Rana shrugged and said "I wouldn't worry about it. Sanity is way overrated. Sane people are always like 'Stop raping reality! Elder gods are not snuggle buddies! Why would you make a spell that makes peoples dicks explode?! Stop exploding my dick!' Frankly they are super lame."

Taylor surprisingly was not comforted by this at all. "I don't want to be insane." She exclaimed and then said in afterthought "All though exploding peoples dicks does sound pretty useful." She made a mental note to learn how to do that later just in case.

"I know right!" Rana said as she nodded her head in agreement.

Despite Taylor's better judgment she really wanted to improve her spellcasting. She was probably the weakest mage in here and that was just embarrassing. "So you said you could improve my spellcasting. How would you go about doing that?"

"Same way as last time." said Rana.

Taylor hesitated. Last time apparently inserted some of Rana's personality into her and she was a homicidal maniac. Maybe Mr. Nibbles can undo the damage. But what if he can't? Come on new magic skills would be totally sweet. But going even crazier was bad. Maybe she could learn the dick exploding thing later. "Okay I'm in."

The tattoos on Rana's arms came to life and attached themselves to Taylor. Memories of Rana casting various spells began to meld with her memories till the point that they were indistinguishable from her own. _Taylor raised her hands and her foe jammed his arm down his own throat and then choked to death on it… She dodged to side before quickly casting her spell. Spiked tentacles burst from the ground and entered her all of her opponent's orifices except his mouth, he needed to breathe after all… She locked on to a bandit and telekinetically thrust him up the asshole of the bandit leader, a few more and she would have centipede…_

Rana's tattoo retracted and she said "Well that is all you can handle for now. You learn anything?"

Taylor nodded with a smile and said "Yep, Loads!"

"Cool well I better get back to work." Rana said turning back to her papers.

"Can I help out?" said Taylor giving her puppy dog eyes.

"Sure!" Rana chirped. They then spent the rest of Taylor's sleeping period creating unspeakable horrors.


	6. Day 9

You wake up to find the Transporter drooling all over your shoulder. Gross. You cast a quick cleaning spell and maneuver the Transporter gently out of the way so you can stand up. As you flex your wings to get the kinks out of them you consider waking the Transporter, but she is so adorable when she is asleep. Yeah you think you'll leave her like that for now and try to get some more healing circles going. You grab your materials and get to work. When you finish your first circle the Transporter walks up and hands you some food. You sit down and start to eat vigorously.

"So the plan for today is still on right? I am only asking since you seem to have trouble sticking to a plan for any length of time." the Transporter asks wryly.

"I can stick to a plan!" you say indignantly spraying food all over the place.

The Transporter wipes pieces of toast of her pants and gives you an unimpressed look. "Need I remind you about Sunday?" she says with a raised eyebrow.

Okay the whole Nature Bender incident was admittedly a total cluster fuck, but you managed to pull through in the end, so all's well that ends well you say. "Did I or did not come up with a way to cure drug addiction." you reply.

"You did." she admits then says "But it did come to you in your sleep by pure happenstance. That was not you plan at all. That was just dumb fucking luck."

"Dumb luck is my bread and butter." you say nodding sagely.

"That is not something to be proud of!" she says irritated.

"Clearly the Gods are looking out for me. We are buddies after all. Except Sarenrae that bitch." you say. Gods you hate that bigoted slaving whore so much.

"Your friends with gods? What gods?" she replies.

"Loads and loads. Let's see here there is Cayden Cailean, Groetus, Nethys-" you start listing your various old colleges when the Transporter cuts you off.

"Wait what religion are they from? Have never heard of any those ones." she asks confused.

You are really not sure what she means by that to be honest. "They are from their own religion?" you say unsure.

She stares at you before muttering "You know what I really don't care. So you worship these guys then?"

"No. I told you, they are my buddies. We used to hang out and stuff." you say correcting the Transporter misconceptions.

She opens her mouth then closes it before changing the subject "So it is noon and we are having the rally in ten minutes you ready?"

You give her a nod and say "Yeah I got two circles done already and can start doing some more through the rest of the day." You then head over to the stage area and mentally prepare your speech for when all your minions arrive. After about twenty minutes the majority of them seem to be here, so you assume the rest are not going to be coming back. You open your mouth to speak when you feel the barrier around your lodge rumble.

Surprised you connect your senses to your lodge to see what is causing the problem. Outside the warehouse you see the Wyrm and fifty or so of his men standing outside. The Wyrm raises his fist and slams it into your barrier causing it to ripple. You can see cracks beginning to form. Judging from the size of the cracks you don't have long till he breaks in.

Shit shit shit. Okay you got to think this through carefully. If you fight here there is good chance your minions will get injured and that is not okay. As the boss it is your job to make sure that they live long and fruitful lives and being eaten by dragon is neither of those things. You need to get the Wyrm and his men to chase after you so everyone else can get away safely and then lose him. It pains you that you will have to abandon your lodge and all the hard work you put into it, hopefully you can set up a new one before withdrawal kicks in.

You raise your hand and yell "I need everyone to listen very carefully, the Wyrm and his men are outside trying to break in. I will go and confront them and lead them away from here, while you escape from the back."

The Transporter asks you "Wait who is the worm?"

"You know, the angry dragon man." you reply.

"Holy fucking shit! Lung is here! Why is he here?!" she exclaims panic entering her voice. Everyone else in the warehouse looks terrified now as well.

"He is jealous that the Hollow Man is now my best friend and not his." You explain. Dragons are murderously possessive of their stuff and they never let go of a grudge, so annoying. "But that is not important, I need you to lead the Merchants somewhere safe. I'll call you when I shake the Wyrm." You fly towards the entrance quickly as you can, your wings buzzing loudly. You hear the Transporter yell something after you, but you got no time left to talk, you got to do this now. As you move you summon the air spirit Moves-Like-Wind and say "I need you to boost my flight speed please and thank you."

He obliges you and you feel your speed increase seven fold. You zip right by the Wyrm before he even has time to respond to your presence. You are now about a hundred meters up in the sky which should keep you safe from their bullets. For some strange reason you have the desire to harvest his tears, but that is total not happening. You would have to get within melee range of dragon and you would be a dead woman if you did that.

So instead you decide to play it safe and attack him from range. You hurl a lightning bolt at the Wyrm to get his attention. He tries to twist out of the way but does not manage to make it in time, so you hit him dead center in the dick. He falls to his knees and lets a 'draconic cry' of agony and rage. You feel as though a key has been turned inside your very soul and something was unlocked.

You hear him roar "You motherfucking bitch! I am going to fucking kill you!"

Well looks like you got his attention, good job! You take off but you make sure that you are not going too fast that way he can't lose you. You see him chasing after you on foot, but his men seem to be staying behind and heading into the warehouse. You point to them and say to Moves-Like-Wind "Can you take them out for me. Thanks!" as you zoom away.

You hurl some more lightning at the Wyrm to make sure that he keeps chasing after you, unfortunately he seems to be recovering from your attacks faster and faster. He flings gouts of fire back at you in return, but due to the distance between you and him, you have no trouble dodging. After a couple minutes he finally sprouts his wings and takes off after you in the air.

Time to take this fight away from the city since you are pretty sure he is not going to be careful with his flames and you don't want anybody innocent to get in between your fight. You zoom towards the nearby ocean making sure to increase your speed just enough so that the Wyrm's ever increasing speed does not overtake you. You are pretty far into the ocean when the connection to Moves-Like-Wind breaks due to the distance between you and it, so you slow down substantially. Shit. The Wyrm is now closing the distance quickly between the two of you.

At this point the fight between the two of you would be hopeless, so escape is your only option. You cast invisibility on yourself and quickly change direction, only for the Wyrm to change his flight path to match yours. Stupid super dragon senses. There is only one place left out here to take cover, so you dive straight down into ocean. Right before you hit the water you transform into a dolphin and swim fast as your flippers allow you to. The Wyrm in its rage follows you into the water. Fortunately for you his body is not designed for swimming so you are able to increase the distance between the two of you.

You see an outcropping up ahead and once you move behind some cover you change once again, this time into a hermit crab and you then hide inside a crevice. The Wyrm looks around for you, but can't find you due to your new size and scent. He starts to slowly change back into his more human form and so he starts to return to surface. Once he his far enough away from you that you can barely see him you transform into a minnow and follow after him.

You can see that he has returned all the way back to human by the time he brakes the surface and is now swimming his way back to the shore, when an idea strikes you. You are pretty sure that since he is a silver dragon that he can't breathe under water so you summon Briny-Depths. Unfortunately you over cast the summoning and you can feel some magical backlash rip through your fishy body causing you to cough up blood. "Hey could you pull the Wyrm far as you can underwater?" you ask it in astral space. Briny-Depths gurgles at you and moves swiftly over to the Wyrm.

It grabs onto him and swallows him before the Wyrm has any to react and then dives back into the ocean. The Wyrm struggles and no doubt would break free if he had the time to do so. Unfortunately for him Briny-Depths is able to move up to kilometer in under fifteen seconds. Briny-Depths vanishes as soon as he hits the thousand meter mark leaving the Wyrm all be his lonesome.

You watch the Wyrm struggle to make his way to surface, but since he has no one to fight against his body will not endure the lack of air long enough for him to succeed. He is able to make it about a few dozen meters before his struggles cease and he is pulled back down by his steel helmet.

Well that is the first time you have ever drowned a dragon to death. Cool. You make your way back to surface and turn back to your base form. You take to the sky and consider your next move. Well you said you would call the Transporter once you got rid of the Wyrm so guess you should that then. You reach to get your talky box when notice that your clothes are all missing including your pants that had your talky box inside of them. Whoops.

You hover there above the waves considering what you should do. Since you have no way of contacting any of your friends, you lack the means to arrange a meeting spot with them. You guess if you head back to your lodge that somebody will come to check to see if you are there. That is if they don't assume that you got eaten by a dragon. You don't have your map so you are not a hundred percent sure if you can make it back to your lodge, but floating here is not really going to accomplish anything, so fuck it.

You head back towards the city ignoring your aching side. It feels like you have been trying to digest broken shards of glass. It is painful but manageable. You head over to area with all of the submerged boats, since you're pretty sure your base was somewhere around here. After twenty minutes you spot your lodge and fly over to the entrance. There is a bunch of corpses dressed in green and red lying around the front. It looks like they have been electrocuted to death. Weird.

You shrug your shoulders and began to loot their bodies like all great heroes do. One of them has a bag so you dump anything of value that you kind find. You find about thirty pistols with a clip or two for each gun, fourteen baseball bats, forty three knives, a bunch of leather pouches with paper money and coins, keys of all sorts, and various sets of clothes.

You should probably get dressed since last time you were naked you upset the Transporter for some bizarre reason. Since these clothes are too big for you, you have to use a belt that you found to keep your new pants on. You then cut the legs of the pants and sleeves of the shirt down to size that fits you. They are still pretty baggy but they will do for now.

It takes you four trips, but you manage drag your newly found loot inside. Although now you have a bunch of naked corpses outside your base, which is a little disconcerting to be honest. You decide to summon Ash-Wind and ask him to cremate the bodies for you. He enthusiastically burns the bodies to nothing and makes happy popping noises. He sure loves burning things. As you wave goodbye he asks you to call him if you ever need him to burn some flesh again, preferably living flesh, what a silly billy.

You search your lodge for any signs of life, but find nobody. You guess you are just going have to wait for somebody to comeback. Well since you got time you might as well get to making more healing fields now that the Wyrm is done distracting you. So rude. As you are drawing the runes inside the ritual circle the Hollow Man walks up to you. He is not currently wearing his cool demon mask so you can see the relieved expression on his face. You give him a friendly wave and cheerfully say "Hello! Long time no see!"

He gives you a small smile and says "Hello Necros. I am glad to see that you are okay. May I ask what happened with Lung."

You give him a nod and say "Of course you can."

After a small silence he speaks up "What happened to Lung?"

"He drowned and is somewhere in the ocean now." you inform him.

The Hollow Man winces and says "So you managed what Leviathan could not." You have no idea who this Leviathan guy is, but if he tried to drown the Wyrm he can't be too bad. "Is there a reason you did not call and let us know that you were okay?"

"I lost my pants." you say explaining everything.

He looks over at your clothes and your pile of pilfered gains and says "I see." What does he see? He can be so vague and confusing at times, unlike you. "Since you got so small I need to find you new body armor." He said with a sigh.

You puff up and exclaim "I am not small! I am still growing that's all."

He raises an eyebrow and dryly says "Right." You pout and turn back to your work with a huff. "I will let Squealer know that the emergency is over then." he informs you.

"Who?" you ask confused.

He pauses in thought and then says "The Transporter?"

"Oh! Yeah you should let her know that the coast is clear." you say as you finish up a rune.

When you look up from your drawing you notice that the Hollow Man seems kind of down. If you had to guess it is probably since you killed his friend twenty minutes ago. Yeah that is probably it. Part of you is worried that he is mad at you and will stop being your friend forever. Last time you lost a friend, she did terrible things to you until you broke and you don't know if you can handle that again without going a tiny bit _**crazy**_.

Understanding what the Hollow Man is feeling will allow you to comfort him properly. So you try to picture what it was like to have the Wyrm as a friend and what it would feel like to lose him. Let's see what you remember about the Wyrm again. Well he refused to listen to Hollow Man, then caused the destruction of a bar, the death of bar keeper and then attacked your base endangering all of your minions… wow what a huge bag of dicks. You forgot where you were going with this train of thought again, but what matters is that the Hollow Man is sad and as his hopefully still best friend it is your job to cheer him up. You decide that hugs are the solution. Hugs solve everything.

You walk over to him and give him a hug then ask "Are you going to be okay?"

The Hollow Man does not say anything for a moment before he lets out a sigh and murmurs "I believe I will be, but right now I am having difficulties. For a long period of time everything had lost meaning to me and so I was directionless. Kenta gave me purpose and he was what I dedicated all of my life to. Everything I did was to further his cause, and now that he is gone I can't help but feel as if I lost a piece of myself."

You're really not sure how to respond to that to be honest, but you try anyway "I'm sure the Wyrm wouldn't want you to feel this way as his friend."

"I am unsure how Kenta saw me but I doubt Kenta ever saw me as his friend. Maybe as something valuable that belonged to him." Ugh dragons. You were right the Wyrm is a huge bag of dicks.

There are some tears in his eyes right now, but they are not happy tears this time. You squeeze him tighter, since clearly your hug is not doing its job, as he continues to talk. "While I regret his death, I do not believe I made the wrong decision choosing you over him. If not for you I would still be an empty husk of a person and would not even able to truly mourn Kenta's passing right now." You think that is a good thing? The Hollow Man seems to think so and he seems to know a lot of things so he is probably right.

He gives you a watery smile and says "So don't worry about me okay."

"No." You disagree. "You're my friend so I am always going to worry about you and if anyone ever hurts you I will castrate them, flay their skin, gouge out their eyes…" You go any ten minute rant of all the total justified things you would do to those that **dare** lay a figure on the Hollow Man before concluding with "That's a promise."

"Good to know." he says with humor in his voice and finally returns your hug. You think the two of you will be okay.

* * *

Sam watched in morbid fascination as Dragon continued to stuff her face, her cheeks puffed up like a chipmunks. Dragon had three different plates in front of her: a plate of spaghetti covered in bacon and chocolate syrup, a bowl of melted cheese, ranch and jello all mixed together, and a plate of nothing but boiled eggs with shells still on then. Dragon picked up an egg and popped into her mouth shell and all. 'Dragon was so much weirder in person then you would think she would be. She seemed so normal over the video calls.' thought Sam.

Director Piggot cleared her throat and gave Dragon a pointed look. Dragon stopped shoveling spaghetti in mouth for a moment and looked around the conference table. "Mmpf?" said Dragon spraying food all over the conference table. Ethan was snickering next to Sam, until she elbowed him in the stomach. "Oh! Has the meeting started already." said Dragon in surprise.

"Well there is currently no news to the current whereabouts of Armsmaster. The last known location was in my lab in Vancouver, but the trail went cold quickly after that. Unfortunately Armsmaster is far too intelligent, resourceful, and handsome, making it very difficult to find him." Dragon finished with a dreamy expression and blush on her face.

Sam exchanged a look with Hannah. Dragon clearly had no experience hiding her emotions at all. "On to the subject of Lung and Necros: at 11:34 am they were seen having an aerial battle over the city, with Necros leading him out into the bay. At 11:39 with have images showing them entering the Atlantic Ocean and then at 11:52 we have an image of only Necros emerging from the water sans clothes. Lung did not surface after. I sent one of my suits to see if I could verify if Lung was alive or dead. I was able to recover his body and we currently believe that the cause of death was drowning."

When Dragon was done giving her report Piggot spoke "At this point we believe that Necros is currently aiming to take over all of the local gangs. Thanks to Dragon we were able to connect the death of Adam Mustain and Skidmark. Combined with Necros confession, we are fairly sure that she killed him in his apartment while he was asleep. We have video of her with blonde woman we believe to be Squealer and reports that she has taken over the Merchants."

"If the reports are correct she currently has the entirety of the Merchants under her control as well as Oni Lee working for her. If the pattern continues we believe that she will be attacking the Empire Eighty Eight next in attempt to absorb them into her gang. We are currently unsure of her motives, but she has shown a willingness to use lethal force and attack people in their homes, so we must approach her carefully-"

Piggot was interrupted when Dragon spoke up her finger up her nose "Guys! Guys! This feels amazing. Did you know about this and if so why did nobody tell me about this?!" She then pulled her finger out her nose and inspected the mucus on her finger before putting it in her mouth. "Hmm salty." Everybody stared at her in disgusted silence, until Dragons stopwatch went off. "Oop looks like I got to jack in and check on my things, be back in a bit!" said Dragon. She then slumped over on the table and started drooling.

After a moment of silence Ethan spoke up "Is it just me is she really fucking weird." Sam agreed so completely that she didn't even bother chastising him for language. So weird.

Piggot rubbed the bridge of her nose and spoke "Anyway as I was saying I am classifying her as an A-rank threat for now and if you have to fight her treat her with the same caution that you would if you had to fight Lung. We are unsure what her exact power is but we are giving her a Master 6/Stranger 4/Mover 3/Blaster 3 and-"

"I have been locked out of the Birdcage!" shouted Dragon sitting up.

* * *

Ciara sat on throne drinking tea as she watched the various fairies interacting with her subjects when a ball of light came zooming through her court. Ciara almost squealed with delight, but managed to keep her composure. It would not do for someone of her status to squeal like a school girl. 'A fellow fairy had come to visit my court!' This was the happiest moment of her life and she was not going to let anything ruin it.

As she tried to think of a proper greeting, it quickly flitted around the room examining her various subjects. None of them seemed to notice its presence, even when it hovered right in front of their faces. It gave a loud sigh before muttering to itself "This place sucks. There is no booze anywhere! Well time to head out."

'No! The fairy was going to leave! All because I am being a terrible host, this will not do at all!' Ciara spoke up trying to keep the desperation out of her voice "My lord I must apologize I did not you were visiting and did not prepare ahead of time. But if you require refreshment I am more than happy to oblige." She then summoned some mead and offered it to her fellow lord.

"Eh what?" said the Fairy as it turned to her. "Booze!" it zoomed over to her and picked up the glass without touching it and started to guzzle down the mead quickly. "You can make booze on command, you're the best mortal ever!" the Fairy exclaimed.

"What! I am no mortal! I am a fairy queen!" Ciara said offended. How could her fellow fairy not recognize her royal status?

The fairy tilted its entire body in confusion and said "No you're not-"

'What how dare it!' Ciara had killed for lesser insults and if it thought could get away such behavior since it was a fellow fairy it had another thing coming. "-but I could make you into faerie queen if you want." it finished. Ciara froze and stared at it. "Hmmm actually I could turn this place into one big faerie mound as well and other fae would start to move in. That would be pretty neat actual."

Ciara collected herself and retorted angry "I don't need you turn me into a fairy I am already one."

The fairy somehow shrugged without having shoulders. "Well if you're sure I guess I'll just go on my way."

It then turned and started to head towards a wall when Ciara called out "W-wait! You actual you would be able to bring other fairies here?"

"Sure at the snap of my h-" it then pauses before continuing. "Well you get the idea."

Ciara hesitated. She knew she was a fairy, she had no doubt about that, but the company of other fairies would be wonderful. Since it was fae it could not lie to her, so what was the harm in saying yes? It is not like it could turn her into a lesser fae. She opened her mouth gave the only answer that she could.

* * *

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Topic: Stranger in the Park

In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Local Capes

Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Posted On Jan 8th 2011:

About an hour an ago a **video** of some sort of a Stranger in a park surfaced on the web. Looks like they have some kind of invisibility or non-detection power. At the 2:03 minute mark you can see them pick up their bag and it goes invisible as well. Looks like we have a new cape in Brockton Bay, do you think she is a local and is she a hero or villain?

(Showing page 3 of 6)

►WhatsTheHaps

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

Whoa her voice is trippy as fuck. The song also makes me feel odd like I am made of wind or something. You don't think that it has some sort of master affect do you.

►MadErrant

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

WhatTheHaps God I hope not I was listening to it on a loop. I should probably stop until the PRT makes a statement.

►Winged One (Confirmed Troll)

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

I should challenge her to a singing contest. I'll have to swing by Brockton Bay soon.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

We have been authorized to release information on the Parahuman in the video. We have an image of her **here**. She goes by Necros and should not be approached. She has recently triggered and is very unstable. She has shown a willingness to use extreme levels of violence when provoked. If you have any information on her current whereabouts please contact the PRT hotline.

►SleepyRock

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

Guys I live in this neighborhood and the Merchants showed up like five minutes ago and there was lots of gunfire. I think Necros is picking a fight with the Merchants.

►Tower of Hats

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

SleepyRock Maybe she will get rid of those scum for us. God knows the PRT and the Protectorate aren't.

►MadErrant

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

Reave Do you know what her powers are? Do I need to worry about being mastered?

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

MadErrant We had thinkers examine the video and while there is a minor master effect it is non-harmful. All it does is invoke the feeling of being wind and there appear to be no long term effects. As for the rest of her powers we know that she can create projections, unknown master effect when she sings, lightning generation, and can make herself or others invisible.

►WhatsTheHaps

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

That is really weird grab bag of powers. Do you think it is all lightning based or something?

►Flower Power

Replied On Jan 8th 2011:

Is it just me or does her voice sound familiar. I can't quite place it, but I know I heard someone like that before?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Topic: Which Endbringer is the Sexiest?

In: Boards ► General ►

Specific Protagonist (Original Poster)

Posted On Dec 15th 2010:

I personally think it is Leviathan.

(Showing page 24 of 24)

►Raging Beard

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

What the fuck is wrong with you people? You all disgust me.

►Winged One (Confirmed Troll)

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

Specific Protagonist Clearly the Simurgh is the sexiest how can anyone say otherwise!

►Specific Protagonist (Original Poster)

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

Winged One Please you are just a Simurgh fan girl. Just imagine what Levithan could do with his tail :O~.

►Nahtiavel

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

*Blushes*

►RadToTheMax

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

Your both wrong Behemoth's abs are rock solid and are solid rock. He is so hot he lights the air on fire. Also have you seen the way Simurgh dresses, clearly she is a huge slut.

►Winged One (Confirmed Troll)

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

:[ You guys suck.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 22, 23, 24

Topic: Necros killed Skidmark!

In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Local Capes

Intrepid Moose (Original Poster)

Posted On Jan 9th 2011:

So I was out eating lunch at Jay's Bistro, when one of the other customers started flipping the fuck out and suddenly changed shape into, you guessed it, Necros. Anyway she started ranting and raving about not remembering who she was before she started ripping herself up with her bare hands. It scared the shit out of me that's for sure.

Panacea, who was apparently eating with her, managed to calm her down. I started filming about this point you can watch it **here**.

So Necros killed Skidmark and it sounds like she is probably a Case 53 that escaped from wherever they are making them. Also who do you think that blond woman Necros left with was?

(Showing page 11 of 11)

►WhatsTheHaps

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

So are the Merchants going to dissolve as a gang then? Because if so thank God for that.

As to the blond woman, isn't Squealer blond?

I guess those tattoos could be a physical mutation like what other case 53s have? But it seems kind of like a stretch to me.

►Ship Happens

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

Wait were Panacea and Necros going on a date? I need to update my shipping charts!

►Coyote-C

Replied On Jan 9th 2011:

Ship Happens That's what you focus on!? Really!

WhatsTheHaps Why would Squealer be working with Necros unless... Necros is the new leader of the Merchant. Well Necros definitely seems to be crazy enough to be the leader of the Merchants.

Also she doesn't remember who she is. That is a trait of all case 53 right?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 9, 10, 11

Topic: Lung vs Necros

In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Local Capes

Grungy Mits (Original Poster)

Posted On Jan 11th 2011:

Guys I just saw Necros and Lung flying over me apartment building shooting lightening and fire at each other! They are headed towards the bay right now!

(Showing page 18 of 18)

►Grungy Mits (Original Poster)

Replied On Jan 11th 2011:

Necros just came flying back from the bay. I would post the pictures except she is butt naked and I am pretty sure I would get banned if I post them here. Lung never resurfaced, I think she just beat Lung in a one on one fight.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX

Replied On Jan 11th 2011:

Holy shit! Did she just kill Lung!

►The Laughing Man

Replied On Jan 11th 2011:

XxVoid_CowboyxX Don't be an idiot she probably just lost him underwater.

►Winged One (Confirmed Troll)

Replied On Jan 11th 2011:

Hey guys I got a sneak peak of an album made by Necros. The album is called **Dragon Slayer** and I heard if you sing along with this song you could get super powers~

►Raging Beard

Replied On Jan 11th 2011:

Winged One Fuck off you troll.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 16, 17, 18

Somewhere in the atmosphere a figure smirked.

* * *

The Hollow Man hands you a new talky box then walks off to make his talky box calls, so he does not distract you from your ritual. After a few minutes he comes back then sits down and watches you work your magic. You are at the tail end of your healing ritual when people start coming back in large numbers. You give them a friendly wave as you finish your ritual, time to give your speech.

As you start walking to the stage the Transporter marches right up to and smacks you across the back of the head and as you yelp in surprise she pulls you into a hug. Your vision is blocked by her ample breasts, not that you're complaining. "God you are such reckless motherfucking idiot. Don't you fucking dare ever do something like that again." she mummers.

You are not sure what she is talking about so you can't really promise not to do whatever she is asking. What if she means never drink booze again! You can't take that risk so you need her to clarify, so you speak up. "Huh?" you say in confusion.

You her huff and say "Seriously running off to fight fucking Lung and fifty men all by yourself, you could have died you idiot. Did you even have a plan?"

"Yep! Shoot him in the dick and run for it." you say.

"That. Is. Not. A. Plan." she grits out.

Geez Louise she is picky. Your plan was a masterpiece. It had a whole two steps to it and everything, which is twice the usual amount of steps you have to your plans. "Sure it is! It worked perfectly! I am alive and unharmed, and he is dead and stuff. This is not the first time I have fought a dragon you know, although I never drowned one before." you say trying to calm her down.

"So are you making that promise or what?" she demands unappeased.

"To stop doing what? Making plans? Kicking ass? Being sexy?" you ask unsure. You can't think else that you could have done. You suppose plans are completely unnecessary and if she wants you stop bothering with them you can oblige. You don't think you can stop doing the other two though.

The Transporter let a scream of frustration. "Stop being reckless and doing things half cocked you moron. You can die!" she growls.

"Uh sure?" You haven't ever done either of things so you have no problem making that promise. And really dying is not so bad. You usual just chill with some god, till your friends bring you back from the dead. Anyway now that is over with time to enjoy the hug. You lean into her embrace and take in her scent. She smells of oil, metal, methadone, and sweat. Gross. You cast a quick cleaning spell and make her smell like cherries. Much better.

She lets out a sigh and lets you go, much to your disappointment "Somehow I don't think you are going to keep that promise. Anyway I am glad you're alright, you scared me to death when you ran off. Also what happened to your clothes?"

"I sacrificed them for victory." you explain.

"Only you." she says rolling her eyes and makes her way up to the stage.

You follow after her and turn to face the crowd. "Well now that the thing with the Wyrm is over with, let's get back to what we were doing before." You point at your three healing circles "You just need to stay in those for a few minutes every four hours or so, that way your addiction does not kick in. The longer you stay in them the faster your body will recover. I am going to eat lunch and then make some more circles."

Actually do you have any food now that you think about it? Your pretty sure you have burned through what the Hollow Man gave you, since it was only suppose to last you a couple of days. Hmmm. Well the Transporter probably knows if there is any food stashed around here. Also now that you think about it you never finished your seduction of the Transporter. You can't leave a job half down like that, it is completely unacceptable. You walk over to her swaying your hips from side to side and greet her with a purr "So do you want to go get something to eat."

Ha! She is blushing. You watch her eyes following your body with a smirk. She gives you a tight smile and says "Sure." She leads you to a workshop with bits and pieces scattered around the place. You are not sure what she is building, but it looks pretty big. She walks over to a cupboard and grabs some food from it before placing the food in a box and pushes some buttons.

As you are waiting for whatever the box is doing to your food, you sidle up to the Transporter and snuggle against her. She stiffens as you start to suck on her neck and pushes you away quickly. You look up at her in confusion and say "What's the matter?" Does she not like neck sucking? If so you can suck her in other places if she wants.

She takes a deep breath and says "Look Honey there is no easy way for me to say this okay, but it looks like I am going to have to. I'm flattered and all, but I am not gay."

"Okay then? I am not gay either so what's the problem?" you ask confused.

She stares at you for second and then talks slowly as if she is dreading the answer "What do you think gay means?"

"Gay is when you like dicks and straight is when like pussy. So if you're not gay then I don't see the problem is?" you say. Unless when she is saying she is not gay she means she is too depressed to have sexy times. Which is a total catch-22 since sexy times would totally cheer her up.

"That's… there so many things wrong with that sentence I don't even know where to start, so I am not even going to try." she says in disbelieve then adds. "I like dicks okay."

Gasp! The Transporter is gay! Not that there is anything wrong with that. "But you where blushing and stuff when I flittered."

"Yeah your field makes me act weird when you catch me off guard and I don't focus. But when I stop looking at you I go back to normal." She says gently.

You wrack you brains for a solution to this conundrum when you stumble across the perfect plan. Like all of life's problems it can be solved with magic. "I can grow a dick!" you shout.

She starts choking on air but manages to spit out "What the fuck!"

What did you do wrong now?! Maybe she wants a longer explanation. "I would create an illusion of myself with a dick. It feels real to the both us, so problem solved." She just gaps at you, no doubt stunned by your genius. "Unless you want to be the one with the dick?" You are not really into that, but if she wants to have dick, you can live with that.

"I don't want a dick! Don't give me a dick!" she shouts.

You shrug and say "Okay I'll be the one with the dick."

She buries her face in her hands and groans "Nobody is going to be growing dicks okay."

"But I thought you were gay? Don't you want dicks?" you say. Now you are just totally lost.

She sighs "It's not that simple okay?"

Noooooo. This is not going the way you wanted to at all. "Will you at least consider it? Please?"

She lets out another sigh "I'll think about it." She stands up and walks out of the room. The box starts beeping, but you're not feeling hungry anymore.

That was a complete disaster and you can't think of anything in your last two weeks of existence that could top that in sheer amount of failure. You are unsure where to go from here with the Transporter. You doubt trying to push her to make a decision would end with her making the choice you want her to and your pretty sure if you give her space she will delay giving you answer for as long as possible. This situation sucks total balls. You sit there and stew in your disappointment, before deciding that sulking is a huge waste of time.

With a sigh you stand up and pain shoots up the side of your body causing you to whimper. Right, the magical backlash, you had forgotten about that. Well nothing a day's or two's rest can't fix, but it still fucking hurts. Grumbling to yourself you head back to the main area, maybe you should just start the next healing circle? Except you are feeling pretty lonely right know and making new friends always cheers you up.

You wander over to a circle that has several people lounging about in it and plop down next to a group of three minions. You immediately regret sitting too quickly as pain lances up your side causing you to wince. "Hi I'm Necros." you say as you ignore the pain. You stick your hand to the nearest person, a short brunette woman.

She gives you a look of some sort before taking your hand and saying "Yeah we know. I'm April."

"So how are you guys doing? Is the circle working right?" you ask.

A blond man with a scraggily beard shrugs and says "Yeah. I don't feel any cravings at all, so good job with your weird glowy circle thing."

"Thanks!" you say beaming at him. "I worked really hard on it."

The last member of your group a black haired with a scar over his eye spoke and asked "So what happened with Lung anyway?"

"Oh! Did I not explain that?" That is so weird. You are usually so good at explaining yourself and your actions. "I blew up his dick and then drowned him."

Both men wince, but Apricot let out a snort of laughter and says "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. By the way how did you kill that prick Skidmark?"

"Ripped his head off. He never saw it coming." you say with pride. Scar-eye is giving you a nervous look now for some reason.

"Good." she says with a vicious smile. "So are you planning on killing Kaiser next?"

"Who?" you ask.

She gives you a funny look and says "You know the guy who runs the E88. Makes swords and stuff. Huge douche bag, ring any bells?"

Oh him. "Yeah I should probably get rid of him to, but right now I am focusing on getting you guys feeling better. To be honest I have trouble taking him seriously at all. He seems like a complete idiot." Seriously he has to be pretty stupid to be a skinist, so getting the drop on him can't be too hard.

She gives a nod of satisfaction and asks "So how long you been parahuman then? Can't have been that long, since I have never heard of you before."

How long have you been awake again? Let's see here hmmm. "Nine days I think."

Scraggily laughs and says "Wow you don't fuck around do you. You managed takeover a gang and wipe out another in less than two weeks."

You preen under his praise and say "I'm just super focused and nothing distracts me from my goals is all."

You spend the next five minutes making small talk trying to get to know them better. Apostle is looking forward to going back and trying to make amends with her family. Apparently she ran away after a stupid argument and got nabbed by the Despoiler after a couple days on the street. Scraggily had been down his luck for awhile: no job, no money and addicted to drugs, he had felt at time working for the Despoiler was the best option out a bunch of terrible choices. He is eager to see where you are going to take the Merchants and is staying aboard. Scar-eye does not talk much. You guess he is shy or something.

You put on a little show with your flock of birds and they seem to enjoy it. Scraggily asks how you made your lodge, so you try to explain the mechanics behind the lodge to him. Although Scraggily seems genuinely interested he does not seem to follow your lesson. You stand up gingerly after a few more minutes of chit chat and get back to work.

After three more hours you manage to get the fourth circle of healing up and going. Frankly you are exhausted due to your battle with the Wyrm, your aching side and heart, and getting three circles done today. You are considering heading to bed when you spot the Collector sitting in one of your circles. Now that you think about it you only talked to him that one time that you first met him. While you have been busy you feel like you have been a little bit rude, so you decide to hang out with him before heading to bed.

You mosey on up to him and give him a little wave "Hi!"

The Collector who had been looking up at the ceiling looks over to you and greets you in turn "Hello." As you move to sit next to him he speaks up "Are you injured from your fight with Lung? I ask because you are moving with a slight limp."

"Nah." you say "He didn't lay a finger on me, although I may have boiled my insides a little with magic."

He frowns and says "Are you sure you don't need a hospital for that?"

You wave off his concern and say "I should be fine tomorrow or the day after it's no big deal. So whatcha up to."

He gives you shrug and says "Sitting mostly and examining your art piece. I have to ask, why does your moon have a screaming skull on it?" He points up at the ceiling and sure enough the sun has long set, and in its place are the stars and a moon with a screaming skull carved on to its surface.

"Why wouldn't the moon look like that?" you ask confused.

"Have you ever looked at the moon?" he asks you while giving you an odd look.

"Not recently." you admit. "But last time I checked it was a friendly avatar of madness and end times."

The Collector stares at you in silence before saying "Okay then. I can assure that the moon is not that."

Huh weird. Well this city is pretty strange and all so maybe they have an odd moon. "So any plans for what you are going to do when you are cured?"

He snorts and says "Not a lot I can do is there." He makes gesture at himself, but you're not getting what he is trying to say.

Curious you ask "Why not?"

"Because I am a small pink goblin man with a history of violent crime." he explains slowly.

Yeah your still not seeing the problem to be honest "Why don't you just say you're sorry?"

"Yeah I am sure that the PRT will let everything slide if I do that." He says with complete sincerity.

"That's great!" you say. You are happy you managed to solve his problem so quickly.

"Sarcasm is lost on you isn't." he says dryly. Oh sarcasm, you're really bad with that. Like that one time your friend said you should totally eat that dark god in a bottle and it turned out she was being sarcastic afterwards. Oh well live and learn. "No the PRT would not forgive me and they would throw me in jail."

Damn that PRT! Their list of crimes grows by the day! "Well you can stay here. I'll always look out for you." you tell him.

He gives you a smile and says "Thanks. You seem like a good kid even if you are missing a few cards from your deck." You are pretty sure you don't have a deck of cards, but you did loot these clothes, so maybe you do. You let out a loud yawn and wince in pain. "Tired?" asks the Collector "Well don't stay up on my account boss. Go get some sleep."

You give him a quick goodbye hug and head off towards your room. As you get in bed you realize with a pang that this is the first night you slept without the Transporter since you met her. You curl up into a ball of sadness and fall asleep.

* * *

'I killed Lung.' thought Taylor with pride when she woke. That was actually pretty impressive if she said so herself and she did say so. Past Taylor would have been bothered by the thought of taking a life, but past her was a total wuss. Sometimes you had to break some skulls to make an omelet of the brains of your enemies. She was frankly embarrassed she had been like that at any point of her life. Seriously who goes back to the same place to be pushed around over and over again? Past Taylor was an idiot.

If she ever saw Emma again she should give an Emma a dick and then explode it. The look on her face would be priceless. At the thought of exploding dicks Taylors thoughts shifted back to Lung. She heard that he took on the entire Protectorate at once and won, and she beat him in a one on one fight! Okay sure she ran way for most of it, but still she blew up his dick and then killed him, so clearly she way more awesome then the Protectorate could ever be. She bet none of them had super cool skull tattoos on their face either. What a bunch of squares.

Humming a little tune to herself she sat upright. 'Hmmm what to do what to do?' She could go see Rana again, she felt giddy about just having a friend again, but at the same time she bet that there were so many interesting things to see around here. To experience new things was the zest of life. It drove off the death of the soul, known as the status quo. She would just have to be a careful is all, so she didn't end up in fate worse than death, like a room with a moose.

Taylor skipped merrily to the archway and poked her head through. She took in the music, letting it swirl and wrap around her like a cocoon. This time three new songs joined the chorus. The first was the sound of metal slamming together. Each clang caused Taylor's poor pixie ears to ache. The second song was hard to wrap her brain around. She could hear the music, but at the same time she knew she that she was not actual listening to it. Each note was a deception pretending to be something it was not. The third was simple baaaing of sheep.

After a moment of contemplation Taylor decided on her course, the voice that sang of its total isolation from others. Now that Taylor had a friend again she could not ignore the call of somebody who felt all alone. She remembered the pain of being all alone in the world herself and she refused to allow anyone else to feel that pain. As she focused on the song the feeling of isolation and solitude filled her. The sensation of being unloved hit her like missile causing her to shrink back from the voice. Maybe… maybe they would be okay without her? Yeah they would be fine.

As she turned back to her archway she felt a wave of disgust hit her. What was she doing abandoning someone in need! Just like how all those people had never came to her aid when she was suffering and now she was doing the same. Unacceptable! She was Taylor motherfucking Hebert, slayer of dragons and dicks, and no sad song was going to stop her from doing what was right! Taylor puffed out her cheeks in determination and chased after the voice with renewed vigor.

After an hour or so she finally spotted the archway leading to the voice. She then picked up speed and buzzed on straight through it ready to face whatever lay within. 'Thank god I can fly' she thought looking down. The archway opened up on the side of a mountain and the fall would have been a long one for sure. Looking around she found herself in a snow covered mountain range. The song seemed to echo all around her making it difficult to pinpoint its location, but Taylor was not going to give up, not when there were friends to be made!

She flew around the mountain range for the next hour trying to find the singer, but was unsuccessful. She was getting increasingly cold and irritated as her search stretched on and was about to call it a wash when she noticed the peaks of the mountains were slowly rising and falling. Now that she looked closely at the mountains did not appear to be even made out of stone but instead bone and the mountains seemed be in a straight line… She blurted out in surprise "Holy crap the singer is the mountain range."

Her voice echoed loudly throughout the spires of bone and the whole range trembled. At the base of the spires the snow started to fall away as something stood up. 'Holy fucking shit that is a big dragon!' thought Taylor.

It raised its head up to her and opened its eyes, which were at least a mile wide, and then it spoke. Its voice was the loudest thing she had ever heard in her entire life. Her bones seemed to tremble from the force of it. " **MOMMA?** "

Taken aback Taylor hovered there unsure. She didn't think she was the mother of the dragon. Sure weirder thing have happened to her in the past couple of weeks, but she is pretty sure that she would remember giving birth to something that big at least. She shook her head and said "Sorry, but I am not your mother."

She watched as the dragons whole body seem to slump in despair and it gave a mournful keening noise that broke her heart. Tears the size of skyscrapers appeared in its eyes as it wailed. It then threw itself on the ground causing the nearby landscape to splinter and the whole room to shake. It let out a bought of flame the size of a small city with a hiccup leaving behind a valley of molten rock.

Taylor herself started to tear up at the tragic sight before her. She could not stand by and let it suffer any longer, so she spoke up "I-I could be your mom if you want." The dragon looked up at her in surprise. Taylor's voice picked up in strength as she grew to like the idea more and more. "Yeah! I'll be the best mom ever! We could go out and do mom and son stuff like going out to the park, throwing you birthday parties and burninating our enemies! It will be great!"

Eagerly the dragon got to its feet and nodded its head vigorously. Its tail started wagging back and forth slamming into the ground causing earth shattering kabooms. So cute! "Do you have a name Mr. Dragon?" Taylor asked. The dragon shook its head forlornly. The poor thing!

"Then I shall dub thee Mt. Flufflekins" announced Taylor. Mt. Flufflekins let a happy chirp and started bouncing around in joy, crushing all beneath him. He then rolled over exposing his belly to her. She flew down and started to rub a portion of his belly. She wasn't sure if he could even feel it what with her being one millionth his size and all, but it was the gesture that mattered. "Then thrice bound I declare myself your mother forever and ever." escaped Taylor's mouth. 'Why did I say that? Oh well.'

Taylor felt a pulling on her very being as she and Mt. Flufflekins become bound together as mother and son. He closed his eyes and let a happy purring sound that warmed Taylor's heart. The two of them played with each other for the rest of Taylor's stay. As she felt herself waking she gave a tearful goodbye and hugged a portion of one of his scales.

* * *

Sabah rubbed her eyes tiredly as she worked on a unicorn for her client's party tomorrow. Apparently horses weren't good enough for Karen's birthday party, so she had to stay up a late and make several new plushies for the little brat. She let out a sigh. It was nice that her clients paid well, but since they were all rich they were also assholes, demanding the most ridiculous things. She took of a sip of her coffee as she grumbled to herself. She suddenly heard movement behind her and spun around on her seat.

The dragon that she made for a princess themed party was moving all on its own. It stretched its wings and craned its neck. It looked around searchingly before saying "Momma?" in a desperate voice. Sabah simply stared with her mouth hanging open. 'Did I just create life?! Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. I am too young to be a mother.' The dragon hopped down from its spot on the shelf and waddled up to her. It started sniffing her and then licked her with its felt tongue.

It then shook its head and moved away. Sabah felt oddly disappointed. What was she not good enough or something to be its mom, it's not like she gave it life or anything. Sabah then shook her head and thought 'Get a hold of yourself Sabah.' The dragon started to look agitated smoke coming out of its mouth. 'Don't start a fire. Don't start a fire.' prayed Sabah.

It then took flight, circling around the room, before it went out her window. The fact that it had been closed hadn't even slowed it down for a second. 'Well there goes my safety deposit.' She walked over to the window and stared out into the night as her dragon turned into a speck in the sky. "Fuck this. I am going to bed."


	7. Day 10

You wake to the feeling of cloth rubbing against your face. Your eyes snap open and you see the most adorable little dragon ever. You give a squeal of delight "Mt. Flufflekins!" and hug your son close to you. He is so soft, squishy and perfect in every way! He gives a happy chirping sound and says "Mommy!" You sit up and place him in your lap before start scratching behind his ear fin causing him to arch his head back and let out a purr of delight. You sit there enjoying your reunion with your precious son for several minutes, before you remember your various responsibilities. Who knew that being a leader of men would be so much work?

You stand up and keep Mt. Flufflekins in your arms as you walk over to main area of your base. It's still pretty early since you turned in much earlier than usual, you always sleep exactly eight hours like all veteran adventurers do, so most of the people are still asleep inside of your circles. You set down your son and say "Sorry but Mommy is going to need her arms free to work." He lets a whine that breaks your heart. "Well maybe after another minute." you say before scooping him back up before snuggling with him. After a half an hour you finally put him back down and start to gather your ritual supplies as he trails after you like a little duckling. So cute!

As you are working Mr. Flufflekins wander around the room sniffing and licking various objects. At one point he knocks over a can of paint, spilling paint everywhere. You would have scolded him, but he gave you the biggest wyrmling eyes ever and you couldn't find it in your heart to be mad at him. You quickly clean up his mess and then get back to drawing your runes. You are about done drawing your circle when the Hollow Man walks up to you.

You mummer quietly so you do not wake everyone "Good morning Hollow Man."

He gives you a small smile and says "Good morning." He looks over at Mt. Flufflekins and asks "When did you make that?"

You puff up indignation "Mt. Flufflekins is not a that! He is my darling son!" Mt. Flufflekins looks behind your legs up at the Hollow Man and chirps in agreement.

The Hollow Man nods in understanding before asking "Where did he come from?"

"Well when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they fuck the shit out of each other." you say.

The Hollow Man starts to choke on air and sputters "What?! When did that happen?!"

Hmmmm. When did that happen? Now that you think about it you can't remember who Mt. Flufflekins daddy was or laying the egg that was Mt. Flufflekins or ever seeing Mt. Flufflekins before this morning. Well none of that matters, all that matters is he is your beloved son and you will love him forever and ever. The Hollow Man is looking at you expectantly for some reason. You study his face trying to solve this enigma when you remember his question. "I don't remember?" you say unsure.

The Hollow Man lets out a sigh and says "Of course you don't."

If it was obvious from the beginning why did he ask? Silly Hollow Man. Mt. Flufflekins bumps his head against your leg and lets out a cheep. "Could you get Mt. Flufflekins some food while I work?" you ask.

"Can he even eat food?" asks the Hollow Man doubtfully.

"Why couldn't he?" you ask confused.

"He is made of felt." points out the Hollow Man.

"So! Just because he is made of felt does not make him any less of person!" you say scolding the Hollow Man.

He stares at you for a moment before he motions for Mt. Flufflekins to follow him, but Mt. Flufflekins does not seem to want to leave your presence. You kneel down and say "You can trust Uncle Hollow Man Mt. Flufflekins. He is the best." You wave goodbye as the two most important men in your life leave and get back to work.

When they get back you are done powering your ritual. You look around your lodge and see that you have no more floor space for circles. You try to think of more ways to speed up the process before changing your mind. While it is great that your minions are recovering and turning their lives around, the rest of the city is decaying from the evil within and plenty of other people need you help.

You have done a good job so far with the destruction of the ABB and taking control of the Merchants. In fact you would so you are way ahead of schedule, but you still have two evil organizations to take care of before this city is finally safe: the Empire and the PRT. While both are certainly vile dens of sadism and stupidity, you feel like the Empire should be your first target. They are all skinists so they are complete brain dead morons, you should be able to blitz through them in no time allowing you to face your true foe the PRT, the booze hating bastards.

You need to start putting together your next your attack plan today. Unfortunately you know jack shit about the Empire besides that they are rampantly stupid. Fortunately the Hollow Man knows everything about everything so he can answer all of your questions. You walk over to you bag o' stuff and pull out your map of this hell city, before heading over to the Hollow Man. You place the map on the floor next to the Hollow Man and sit down in front of it. Mt. Flufflekins scrambles on to your lap. As you stroke the top of his head you say "I want to wipe out the Empire soon so I need to know about their capabilities."

The Hollow Man sits down on the other side of the map, before he launches into a rundown on the various soul-bound that they have in the Empire and their other resources. Yeesh you forgot how many of these chumps that they had in their asshole club for jerks. You guess it makes sense though that the stupidest group has the most members in it.

"Do you think the same strategy I used on the Merchants would work on the E88?" you ask.

"I doubt it. They are much more organized and Kaiser is much more careful then Skidmark was. Even with him gone others would no doubt take his place as the leader, he is not the first leader of the E88 and he no doubt designed it so he has a heir." replies the Hollow Man.

Damn you were hoping if you cut the head of the snake the body would die. You guess you are going to have to dismantle the whole group person by person. Unfortunately that will take time and they will no doubt strike back at your minions if you don't take them out quickly. The Transporter could make invisible van things, so maybe she could make an invisible base to keep your minions safe, something to ask her later.

As you try to see a weakness in the Empire to exploit you remember something the Hollow Man said earlier about one of their soul-bound, so you speak up "Wait so Putty and bunch her buddies left the Empire? Why?"

The Hollow Man's face scrunches in confusion before it clears "I am unsure why Purity left the E88. She still kept attacking the ABB and the Merchants, but stopped going out with the E88 and several other members left the group or area around the same time. However I think she may have rejoined recently since I saw her working alongside the E88 and the members that retired with her seem to have come back as well."

Hmm that is a possible weak point that you could exploit if you can talk to Puffy. If she left the one time maybe she would be willing to do so again? She could be willing to give you the information that you would need to find Katelyn and end him. "Do you know how I could get in contact with her?" you ask.''

The Hollow Man frowns in thought before saying "There is no easy way to contact her, the only way I can think of is to make it known that you wish to speak with her."

"How would I do that? Put up a giant sign?" you ask.

He snorts and says "While that might work it is hardly subtle." He pauses in thought before speaking again "Actual you could also call a meeting between you and the E88 on neutral ground. Under the pretense on deciding who gains what territory that ABB used to have. This could potential avoid fighting between the two of us that would normally come from a territory grab, so they should be willing to come at least hear what you have to say. Since you have taken out Skidmark and Lung, they will likely want to avoid fighting you. You could then see if you speak to her then."

Actual if you're going to meet the Raisin face to face you could just follow him afterwards and ambush him when he does not expect it. He probably has important documents that you could use to destroy the rest of the Empire as well.

However before you start your next phase of your war against assholes you should reinforce your base more. It has already been attacked once and you have only been here like three days. It would have been a blood bath if you were not there to defend your minions. If you kick start another fight you would not be able to fight your enemy and protect your minions at the same time, severely hamstringing you.

You know that the Transporter can make invisible stuff so maybe she can make your entire base invisible, keeping you and your people safe from douche bags. You stand up and carry Mt. Flufflekins in your arms and then speak to the Hollow Man "Thanks for the help! I need to go talk to the Transporter about defenses." You both give your goodbyes before heading off.

You walk over towards the Transporter's workshop, but stop outside her door and collect yourself before entering. Mt. Flufflekins can senses your nervousness and lets out a whine. You quickly reassure him everything is okay and not to worry, before going back to worrying. After another minute of trepidation you stop pussyfooting around and enter the Transporter's domain.

You see her under one of her machines tinkering away, bits of oil covering her clothes. You sidle over and clear your throat. She looks up at you and opens her mouth before she stops and stares at Mt. Flufflekins. Oh you are being rude! You should probably introduce them to each other. "Mt. Flufflekins this is the Transporter. Transporter this is Mt. Flufflekins."

She just nods ands says "Okay then."

"So I was wondering since you could make invisible van things, could you make the warehouse invisible as well?" you ask.

"I could." She begins slowly before continuing "But then you have a big empty space where the building use to be, making it stick out more than if it was just visible. Unless…" Her eyes glaze over and she starts to mutter to herself. She sits up and moves over to a work bench. She pulls out some paper and starts drawing all sorts of diagrams that you can't make heads or tails of.

"Um what are you doing?" you ask. But she either does not hear you or she is ignoring you. After another minute of trying and failing to get her attention you give up. With a shrug you head back to main area. You hope she is working on the invisibility thing or at least something tangentially related.

As you take in your lodge you get to thinking about how you could improve your defenses on your own. Your mana barrier managed to slow down the Wyrm by a few seconds, but it was definitely not enough to keep him out. You really need to power up your lodge some more. You walk over to your bag o' stuff and rummage through it. After a couple of minutes you finish pulling out several stacks of paper and pots of ink. You dip your finger into a pot and then start to draw a single symbol on each piece of paper.

After a few hours you manage to work your way through all of the piles of paper. You stand up and crack your back before going back to your bag. You then pull out a few rolls of string to hang the papers from the ceiling with. As you prepare the next step, Mt. Flufflekins starts making whining noises indicating he is hungry and wants your attention, so you decide to take a quick break.

* * *

Lisa watched another video of somebody demonstrating the powers that they had gotten through singing along with Necros's song. She so far was able to confirm that they were telling the truth about the origins of their powers but soon as she tried to dig into the how or the why of what was going on, her power went haywire.

With a sigh she gave it another shot. _They have awakened and watch from beyond, none shall hide from there eternal gaze._ Well that was creepy as hell but also super unhelpful. Closing the video she turned back to her desk hoping to find a more productive use of her time.

Stifling a groan Lisa flipped through the files that Coil had given her on Necros. As she read she cursed both him and Necros under her breath, Coil for making her do this and Necros for having her weird anti-thinker power. It was impossible for her to use her power directly on Necros. All she got back was complete nonsensical tangents that would go on forever.

One time she got an hour long lecture on brewing from her power and she could. Not. Turn. It. Off. She had to spend hours creating hypothetical situations with a person with Necros like behavior, so that she did not trigger whatever defenses Necros had up. At best she was only able to guess what Necros would be doing next. Her guesses of course turned out to be totally inaccurate and a huge waste of fucking time.

As she tried to figure out when Necros would be leaveing her hideout her power went on another rant. She slammed her head onto her desk and let out a moan as her power went on about the various sexual positions that night hags enjoyed in vivid and lurid detail. Whyyyyy? As she lay there stewing in her resentment, her phone rang. She picked up and snapped "What."

Coil's voice came back over the phone "Manners Tattletale." She chose not to dignify that with a response. "What have you discovered so far?"

"The videos are authentic, but her anti-thinker power is blocking me from learning how she is doing it. Apparently not all people who sing the song gain powers, but I can't find any pattern why some do and some don't. What I can tell you for sure is that the people gaining powers are not having trigger events, so they are not parahumans. So in theory a parahumn should be able to gain whatever power her song grants" she replied.

"Is the change permanent and are there negative side effects?" he asked. _Wants to make sure it is safe before having his mercenaries attempt the process._

"I would have to meet one of them in person to be sure." said Lisa

"Very well then I will have to arrange a meeting on a later date." he replied. _Is planning on collecting one of the singers for testing._ "I need to lure Necros away from her followers. Do you think she will come alone if her father is used as bait?" _Is planning on killing Necros. Needs Necros died so his plans will work. Has attempted to kill her already. Informed Lung of her location, in the hopes that he would kill her._

From the interview that Panacea gave, she very much doubted that Necros even remembered having a father let alone care about him. "I…" _Will dispose of Hebert if useless as leverage against Necros._ "…He should be useful for bringing her out into the open."

"I need you to be sure on this Tattletale, if this goes wrong it will be on your head." _His power grants him second chances and Necros interferes with it. Is unused to taking risks without his power to take back mistakes._ Holy shit she just hit the mother lode, now to use it to her advantage.

"I am sure I can convince her to walk into a trap." She said forcing herself to keep the smile out of her voice.

You and Mt. Flufflekins return to main area, coming back from your lunch adventure munching on the small-heat-box burritos. Needless to say it went off without a hitch. Well except for the big-heat-box exploding, the kitchen catching fire, you burnt your hair, you failed to make anything to eat, and the Hollow Man has banned you and Mt. Flufflekins from the kitchen and heat-boxes of all kinds. Now that you think about it went off with lots of hitches. That's what you get for making plans, if you don't have a plan then you can't fail, which is why you avoid them as much as possible.

You grumble to yourself, stupid fire burning your hair, as you trudge over to your stacks of paper. To keep Mt. Flufflekins from getting bored you decide to include him in your powering up your lodge. You can tell that he is getting antsy, because when the kitchen fire started he decided to make the fires worse, or was it better? Needless to say there was lots of fire and screaming all around.

Since he is bonded to your soul and shares your magic reality will allow him to assist you in the boosting of your lodge. You take a needle and thread some string through the various pieces of paper then hand the string to Mt. Flufflekins. He flies up and attaches the papers to the yarn above. He has trouble doing so due to his tiny stubby arms, but he manages.

After about another couple hours you have hundreds of papers hanging from the ceiling, gently spinning in the air. You give Mt. Flufflekins the signal. He lets out the most adorable roar ever and shoots out some flame setting one of the papers on fire. As the paper burns the fire jumps from page to page like lightning, till all of the various pieces of paper are aflame.

You watch as the ashes fall like black snow on to ground. Soon the whole area is covered in ash, including your now disgruntled followers. The ashes then start to shift and began to take shape of trees. Soon there is a forest of ash filling your lodge. Up above the fire still burns in the shape of the sigils you drew earlier. Your various birds land on their new perches, taking special care to avoid the fire above.

You take few minutes to appreciate your first mother-son project. You think it's pretty awesome and Mt. Flufflekins seems to agree based on his preening and prancing about. Hmm you should probably teach him some more English so you can have conversations with him. While his cheeping is adorable it can be hard to understand the nuances of his statements. You check the sun and see that you have some time to kill before you turn tonight.

Honestly you are tired of being cooped up in here all day and night and you feel like going out. Except for brief scuffle with the Wyrm and a dunk in the ocean, you have not gone out a done anything outside for ages. You can tell that Mt. Flufflekins feels the same way and he has only been here a whole day. While these people are nice enough, you are an adventurer and staying in one place for long periods of time is just unnatural! You can feel the wander lust building in your bones and you have to answer its call. You decide that you and Mt. Flufflekins are going on a mother-son adventure since he has been a good boy today. He only started one fire after all.

You look around the room surreptitiously to make sure that no one is watching you as you make your way over to exit. The Hollow Man is your best friend and you love him dearly but he is a total worrywart. He would argue against you going outside and exploring, no doubt he would cite facts like every time you go out you end up causing massive property damage or death. But you can't let little things like that stop you from doing things or you would have given up going anywhere centuries ago.

You and Mt. Flufflekins whistle innocently as you tip toe out the door, nothing to see here folks! Once you leave the building you and Mt. Flufflekins take to the sky. You make sure that you and Mt. Flufflekins memorize the land marks nearby so you can find your way back later. You're only plan going out a couple hours and getting lost would no doubt cause you stay up all night. You point to one those incredibly tall buildings and yell "Race you there!" You take off like an arrow and Mt. Flufflekins is not far behind you.

You are about fifty feet away from the building when Mt. Flufflekins lands on top of your head and then kicks off of you sending you tumbling backwards. Sneaky! When you regain control of your flight path he has already made it to the building. He is doing a cute little happy dance in the air so you can't even be mad at him for beating you. You fly over and give him a hug. You then give him a shove and yell "You'll never catch me!" as you zoom towards another building. He gives a cheep of surprise before taking off after you.

After about five more races you are ready to call it a night. Your son managed to beat you three out of five times, you are so proud of him. As you are heading back to the sunken boat zone a crossbow bolt zooms through the air and almost nails you, but you are able to twist out the way and grab it as it passes by you. You examine it and see that it is one those assassin bolts meant to inject poison into you. You look over and see the assassin on a rooftop pointing her bow at you. Behind her is a floating shadow creature.

As you turn to face her you see a beefcake flying toward both your direction yelling "Shadow Stalker what the fuck!" Behind him is an enormous bird with a lizard like tail and bright purple feathers.

You throw yourself in front of Mt. Flufflekins to protect him from the assassins. For all you know their darts can pierce dragon hide and they have a poison that can affect felt based life forms. You would rather die than let these fiends lay a single finger upon your son. Mt. Flufflekins lets out a angry growl towards your would be killers, he like you are furious that they would try to hurt your family.

The Huntress nocks another bolt and raises it towards you when the Guardian reaches her and wrenches the bow from her grasp. You are unsure what is going on so you just watch for now. You narrow your eyes at them as the Guardian is hissing something angrily at the Huntress. You know the Huntress has come to kill you, but you are unsure of the Guardian. He seems annoyed, probably due to her mucking up the attempt on your life. She should have waited for a better opportunity strike after all.

You should probably figure out why they are trying to kill you. It could just be a misunderstanding after all and if it is not a misunderstanding you can force out who they work for from them. All though even if it is a misunderstanding you are not in forgiving mood since they are endangering your son. "So why are trying to kill me anyway?" you ask.

"What?! No! We are not trying to kill you!" replies the Guardian hurriedly.

"Then why are you shooting poison at me then?" you ask unconvinced.

"First of all that is a tinker tech tranquilizer it can't kill you-" he starts.

"Gasp! She was trying to knock me unconscious so she could have her way me then!" you accuse pointing your finger at the Huntress. Curse your sexy body and its temptations!

The Huntress starts making choking noises no doubt surprised by how quickly you deducted her intentions towards your virtue.

"What the fuck is wrong with you Hebert?!" yells the Huntress.

"There is nothing wrong with me! I am perfectly sane no matter what all those people said! I am not the one going around molesting innocent maidens like you!" you say indignantly and then you ask in afterthought. "Also what is a Hebert anyway is that some sort of insult or something?"

"That's your name you dumb bitch!" the Huntress yells at you. "Also I wouldn't touch with a ten foot fucking pole." Rude! Something about her voice really grates on your nerves. For some reason you feel like ripping her spine from her rectum.

"I think I would remember having a name as ridicules as Hebert." you say rolling your eyes.

The Huntress makes a lunging motion at you when the Guardian grabs a hold of her and growls something in her ear. The Guardian then turns to you gives a you a smile that does not reach his eyes. "Look this is just a misunderstanding. We were on patrol and Shadow Stalker uh…" he falters as he tries to come up with more lies.

You sniff and say "A likely story. Wait patrolling? Why would you be patrolling?"

He gives you an odd look and "The Protectorate patrols the city to stop parahuman crime."

"Wait I thought the PRT did that?" you say narrowing your eyes again.

"Well we the Wards are stationed in PRT headquarters and they are in charge of us. But …" You stop listening as you process this information. Of course it all makes sense now! They are PRT assassins trying to kill you. You bet there isn't even tranquilizer in the dart that you are holding.

Yeah you're done talking with these bozos, not only are they clearly evil but they are also so incompetent that can't even kill you properly. You are kind of insulted that the PRT thought that these two could have taken you in a fight. Especially the Huntress, she is just the worst. The least the PRT could do is at least send professionals instead of these boobs. "Hmpf if the PRT is trying to kill me they are going to have to do better then you two." you say dismissively.

"Wait we are not trying to kill you!" protests the Guardian but you ignore him. How dumb does he think you are? You turn yourself and Mt. Flufflekins invisible and throw up your notice-me-not field as well, just in case. You move a bit out of the way and then wait for them to leave. You don't want them following you back to your base.

"Is she still here?" asks the Guardian looking at the spot where you were last visible.

"How the fuck should I know?" snarls the Huntress with her stupid ugly voice.

The Guardian starts rubbing his brow no doubt disgusted by the Huntress as much as you are. "God damn it Shadow Stalker you can't go doing things like that. Piggot explicitly gave us instruction not to pick a fight with her and now you convinced her that we are trying to kill her."

"She is a fucking weakling. I could take her any day." says the Stupid Poopie Head.

The Guardian makes a strangled noise "She killed Lung! She shoots lightning! Your power is useless against her!" It is? Good to know.

The Guardian and the rancid whore bag argue for a minutes before the Guardian orders her back to their base and then they argue some more. Once they finally leave a brilliant idea occurs to you, they could lead you right back to their secret base! When you finally are ready to strike down the PRT you will know exactly where to go to do so. You quickly explain to Mt. Flufflekins in astral space the plan and the two of you follow the assassins back to their headquarters. After half an hour you all arrive at their base.

You watch the pair of would be assassins enter the building and consider following them inside before discarding the idea. It would put Mt. Flufflekins at risk and that is completely unacceptable. Well you accomplished what you set out to do so you should probably head out, except you are still mad that they put Mt. Flufflekins in danger and you feel the need to vent your anger. You glare at the den of evil and sobriety (you know that is redundant but it is true) in front of you, trying to think of a way to avenge yourself when an idea strikes you and a grin spreads across your face.

Frankly their wall is far to bare and you should decorate it. You call on your magic and began to draw along the side of the building and after a couple minutes your master piece is complete. Mt. Flufflekins gives a chuff of approval at your art piece. With a grin you and he head out. As you make your way down the street you realize you forgot to mark the PRT base on your map so you quickly pull it out. After using the street names to locate yourself, you go to write down the location of the PRT building when you notice it is already on there.

Huh. Well you guess that makes sense now that you think about it. They are law enforcement so it stands to reason that their secret base of evil is in fact a not-secret base of evil. They probably have a few secret prisons scattered across the city so they can illegally hold and torture innocent people but after double checking those are not included on your map as well.

As you are flying back towards your base your phone starts to ring. You say "Hello!" into the phone.

"Necros where are you?" you hear the annoyed and worried voice of the Hollow Man.

"Mt. Flufflekins and I are going for a walk." you reply.

You hear a sigh come from your talky box before he says "Necros can you please inform me when you are going to wander off into the city. It is dangerous and I would at least like to be there in case there is danger."

You shrug and then realize he can't see you, so you say "Relax nothing bad happened unless you count the assassins that attacked me."

You hear a choking sound come from the other end of the line. "Assassins!? You were attacked by assassins! Are you hurt?!" he says in a panic.

"Geez calm down. I told you nothing bad happened. They were so incompetent that they never stood a chance of beating me." you say.

"This is exactly why I don't want you going off by yourself." he says in a strained voice.

"Hey nobody died and no building burnt down like all the other times, so really this time went really well." you say defending yourself.

"That is not an argument for going out that is argument for why you shouldn't go out." he says.

You huff in annoyance "This exactly why I snuck out." you say. "I knew you would make such a big deal out of this. I can't stay cooped up all day! I got to go on adventures! I am an adventure, it is what we do."

There is brief silence before he speaks again "I am sorry I made you feel like you could not go out. Would you at least let me come with you so I know that you're safe?"

"Okay." you say. You feel a bit bad about making him worry, so you guess you are willing to do at least that.

* * *

Carlos stood in Piggot's office holding in a sigh as she yelled at Sophia. "This is you're your last chance Shadow Stalker one more screw up like this and I am done with you. I explicitly told you not to approach Hebert then you went and attacked her unprovoked. She is crazy and she is willing to use lethal force. I do not need her attacking us because you are too much of an insubordinate screw up. I-"

"Ma'am you need to see this." came a voice from her the intercom on her desk.

Piggot paused in her tirade as she turned to her computer. She swore violently before turning the screen towards the both of them. It was picture of the side of the PRT building that had really well done graffiti painted all over it. At the top of the mural were the words "Romanes eunt domus!" 'Did… did she quote Monty Python at them?' thought Carlos. Below it was a rant about how their assassins sucked and they would have to better next time if they wanted to kill her. Then the there was giant fifty foot painting of Sophia sucking a cock with the words poopie head pointing at her with an arrow. At the bottom Necros left her signature with a grinning skull.

Despite himself Carlos was impressed by the amount of detail that Necros had put into it. She had even added shading and depth into her drawing. The level of detail was amazing since they had only been up here five maybe ten minutes tops. In fact he felt like he had seen that dick from somewhere before… "Wait that is my dick!" said Carlos in surprise. Piggot and Sophia stared at him and he blushed. "It just that I would recognize it anywhere… and I am going to shut up now." He refused to look either of them in the face.

Sophia spoke as if he hadn't said anything "That fucking bitch! I am going to kill her!"

"You are going to do no such thing" growled Piggot. "And since you clearly can't handle patrols you are instead going to be cleaning this up and then you're are confined to the base." Sophia opened her mouth to argue but Piggot cut her off "One more step out of line and you are going straight to juvenile hall. Do you understand me?" Sophia just glared at her. "I asked do you understand me." Sophia gave jerky nod. "Good. Now go clean up your fucking mess."

You land in front of the entrance to your base graceful and go inside with Mt. Flufflekins trailing behind you. As you walk in to the building the Hollow Man hurries on over to you and looks you over for injuries. You hold in your sigh. You told him you were fine earlier, you guess he didn't believe you. Once he is done checking you over he asks "What happened to the assassins anyway? You never said."

You shrug "They ran for it when they knew I was too hot to handle. There probably telling their boss right now how much they suck ass."

"Do you know the name of their boss?" he asks sounding like he would like to kill something.

Actual you don't know the name of the person in charge of the PRT now that you think about it, you should figure who they are so you can take them out, so you shake your head at him.

"The E88 must have made the connection between the two of us and are trying to get back at you. They no doubt want to get rid of you so they can claim the city uncontested." He says.

The PRT and the E88 are work together? Your estimation the PRT drops even lower, which is impressive since it was already pretty low. You just can't believe that they are working with skinists. "Yeah we are going to have to stop them soon before their evil plans come to fruition." The PRT is so going down.

Your stomach suddenly rumbles so the Hollow Man makes you wait outside the kitchen as he gets you and Mt. Flufflekins some food. As you wait, you stroke Mt. Flufflekins belly causing him to let out a happy purr. When the Hollow Man returns the three of you eat dinner together in your forest of ash. It is so peaceful what with the glowing fires above, the various songs echoing through the trees, and the grinning moon staring down at you. You wonder what the Transporter is up to, but just the thought of going to see her fills your stomach with butterflies, which is weird because you have no idea how butterflies got in there since you don't ever remember eating any.

Mt. Flufflekins lets out a yawn as you sit there taking in the peaceful atmosphere, looks like it is time for bed for the little guy. You pick him up and bid the Hollow Man a good night, before heading for your room. Mt. Flufflekins is resistant to going to bed, but you are able to convince him by promising him a bed time story. You spend the next half an hour weaving a tale of a man who becomes a rat then a fairy and then finally a god, before becoming a man once more. By the time you are done Mt. Flufflekins is out like a light and since you are feeling tired yourself you decide to join him. As you snuggle up to him and kiss him gently on the brow, before falling asleep yourself.

* * *

When Taylor woke the first thing she noticed was the fact she was resting on top of Mt. Flufflekins's snout. Looking around she found herself in her soul room like usual, with the changes she made to the lodge during the day reflected around her. As she examined the differences she noticed that Mt. Flufflekins was the same size as he was in his room, yet the size of her room remained completely unchanged size wise. Taylor spent a minute trying to wrap her mind how in the world that worked before deciding on magic; magic was the answer to all of life's problems.

As Taylor sat there the day's events came back to her in a rush. Taylor couldn't believe that Sophia Hess was a Ward. Just the thought of that bitch filled her with rage. Did the PRT know the whole time what she had been doing to her and just covered it up so they didn't look bad? That's probably why none of the teachers ever did anything to help her. They just loved their darling Ward didn't they? Taylor sat there seething for a few minutes, before deciding not to waste anymore of her time on the likes of Sophia Hess. She had better then to do with her life.

Taylor considered exploring some more tonight, but paused as she moved to the edge of Mt. Flufflekins's nose. Her son had been alone for so long, that she didn't have it in her heart to leave him alone and she did not know if she could take him with her through the archway. She would have to wait for Mr. Nibbles to come back so she can ask him about taking her son with her. So Taylor sat back down and started telling Mt. Flufflekins stories about his grandparents, since he hasn't gotten a chance to meet them yet. She hoped her Dad was okay.


	8. Day 11-17

An: In the quest people voted on a time skip. So I did one interlude a day of the skip.

01/11/11

Emma lay in her room on her bed staring at the ceiling of her room fuming. Everything had gone wrong since they had pushed Taylor into that fucking locker. That stupid weakling prey triggered in there, so of course the PRT showed up and everything fell apart from there. Sophia's involvement was quickly figured out and Emma had not heard from her since. When the PRT was done with their investigation they reported Emma and Madison involvement to Blackwell and she suspended the both of them for a month. Her mom refused to even talk to her now and while her dad acted more or less the same he wouldn't quite meet her in the eye anymore. Didn't they understand that Taylor deserved it?!

Emma sat up and went over to her computer to check again if Sophia ever responded to her messages, but there were still no reply from her. Bored she surfed the net. To her annoyance she kept running into stories about Taylor this Taylor that. Oh they didn't use her name but she knew it was her. Taylor thought she was strong now just because she had powers, but Emma knew the real Taylor, she was a weakling nobody.

As she checked one of her news sites for what was going on in the Bay, she froze when she saw a head line: _Song gives people powers?_ She opened the story quickly and skimmed it as fast as she could before finding and clicking on the link to the song. This was her chance to final be parahuman and be a true predator. She could show Taylor that for all are her new powers she was just as pathetic as ever.

Emma hurriedly sang along with the tune and everything changed. She found herself surrounded by all that is and will be. She felt as if she was being pulled from all direction, she was going to snap at any moment, when something turned towards her. As its gaze fell upon her everything changed once more and she found herself surrounded by giant bees, hundreds no thousands of them flying all around her and before her was a bee the size of a car. It then spoke making a buzzing noise "You wish to be strong?"

Emma could not bring herself to speak so she simply nodded. The bee continued "I will grant you all the power you will ever need. Unfortunately I can only give you so much power while I am trapped here. I need you to bring me over to where you are if I am to truly help you. So I will help you if you help me. Do we have a deal?" Emma nodded again. "Good."

Emma found herself in her room again and fell off her chair in surprise. There was a loud buzzing in her head compelling her to act. She… she understood what she needed to do. Standing up she began to draw on the walls to prepare her magic.

01/13/11

Emma breathed in and out to calm herself down. She could do this. She left her room and headed down stairs. As she entered the kitchen she stopped and stared at her mom. She… she couldn't do this. The buzzing in her head grew louder and angrier. No this was her mom! She loved her, didn't she? As she walked into the kitchen her mom ignored and resentment flared up in side of her. What was she so disgusting that her mom couldn't even look at her?! The buzzing grew to crescendo, feeding into her rage and pushed her to act.

Emma walked behind her mom and over to the toaster on the counter before unplugging it. She picked it up and quietly moved behind her mom before bringing it down on top of her head. Her mom slumped over onto the table, blood pooling onto the floor from the wound of her head. Emma quickly healed the wound so her mom wouldn't bleed out, she needed her alive for now. Emma then grabbed onto her legs and struggled to pull her back up into her hive.

She lay her mom down on the floor and began to prepare her body for what came next. When was finally done she called out to the hive beyond and one her new servants answered her beckon. She shoved the spirit into the woman before her and the body began to writhe and twist. The skin bulged in various places and began to change shape, but Emma focused all of her concentration on forcing it back into its original shape.

When the body finally stopped writhing, its eyes popped open and it smiled. "Good job honey." It stood up and embraced her "You are such a good girl and I love you so much. When your father gets home he can join us to." Emma smiled and returned her new mother's embrace.

* * *

01/14/11

Missy looked both ways to make sure nobody was watching her when she pulled up the video of the unicorns that appeared earlier last week on her laptop. She watched jealously as a girl was petting one. So majestic. She wished she had a unicorn. She hurriedly closed the tab she was on when she heard footsteps behind her. "What were you looking at?" asked Dennis with mischief in his voice.

"Nothing" she said quickly.

Whatever ever Dennis was about to say got interrupted when Shadow Stalker slammed open the door to the room. Missy fought down a snicker when Shadow Stalker stomped into the main Ward room covered in paint. Apparently after several hours of trying to scrub off the graffiti, Shadow Stalker discovered that whatever the graffiti was made of it wasn't paint and it wasn't coming off. So Piggot ordered Shadow Stalker to repaint the entire side of the building. Unfortunately for Shadow Stalker, Necros' graffiti covered things like windows and security cameras and Piggot was making her reinstall them all herself.

After Shadow Stalker slammed the door to her room closed, Dennis burst out laughing and fell of the coach, Missy couldn't help but let out a giggle herself. Dean gave them both a look of disapproval, but Missy couldn't find it in herself to feel bad about it. After all the crap that Missy had to put up from her, Missy couldn't help but enjoy her suffering a little.

As Missy tried to compose herself Miss Militia walked into the Ward's main room and said "I need to brief all of you in five minutes." Missy's heart sank at the look on Miss Militia's face. Ever since the locker incident things had gone to crap, it had been one problem after another and it did not look like it was going to be stopping anytime soon.

After all the Wards had gathered into the main room Miss Militia began to speak "The rumors about the power granting music seems to be true. In the last two days we believe that there have been at least two new parahumans in Brockton Bay alone. The first was reported to us yesterday when people spotted somebody dressed up as wizard creating illusionary effects to harass people. They apparently went around making people seem like they were naked and the illusions made all attempts to cover themselves impossible."

'What the hell?' thought Missy. Dennis had to shove a fist in his mouth to hold back his laughter, earning a smack from her.

Miss Militia continued talking as if they hadn't done anything. "The second sighting was of a man running around naked, except for his underwear on his head and a bunch of dead rats strung to him, shooting fire all over the place while screaming about invisible bees attacking him." This time Dennis burst out laughing and Miss Militia glared at him. "This is isn't a joke several people got caught in the flames and he burnt down a building."

After Dennis's quick apology Miss Militia continued "It is only going to get worse from here once word gets out that the rumors about the song are true. According to our thinkers anywhere from 1/100 to 1/1000 people can effected by this song. So we can be expecting thirty five to three hundred and fifty more parahumans in our city alone, in the next couple of weeks. And if they are anything like the last two incidents we are going to have our hands full."

'Crap baskets.' thought Missy 'When it rained it poured.'

* * *

01/15/11

Brutus dreamt. Something was different about his dream but he could not understand what. He felt more... aware? As though things that he did not used to understand suddenly fell into place. As he tried to puzzle out what had changed he heard a howl behind him. It was indescribable and he could not help but submit before the dog before him. Although the call it a mere dog seemed like kind of blasphemy. It was THE DOG. It encompassed all thing that was dog and compared to it he may has well been a cat.

It spoke of many things that Brutus did not truly understand, but what Brutus did understand was that his Master was in danger from great and terrible things that sought to destroy humanity. As the Beta of the pack he would not stand back and allow his Alpha to be harmed. The Dog approved of his desire to serve and protect those in his pack which is why it chose him to be its champion. If Brutus agreed to its terms then he would be given the power he needed to protect.

So he agreed to do what the great Dog from beyond asked of him: protect and safe guard all of humanity, the friend of Dog, against all those that wish to destroy them. He felt his body, mind, and soul change. He had transcended what he once was and now was the pinnacle of all thing that was dog. Brutus woke, both figuratively and literally. He stood up and went to go find his Master. He needed to tell her of the danger that was coming so she could prepare.

He quickly found her but he was unsure how to convey what he needed to say to her. She understood that there was danger, but he could not explain from where it was coming from, much to his frustration. He tried to think of a way to speak to her when he suddenly knew what he need to do. He focused on the form that he needed to be and felt himself change.

Brutus finding himself unused to his his new human form and its two legs immediately fell over on to his side, sprawling naked on the floor. He could smell his Master's surprise and her sudden aggression towards him. He quickly tried to reassure her that it was still him and exposed his belly to her, fortunately she accepted him quickly and was no longer hostile.

"Were you pretending to be a dog?" she demanded.

Brutus shook his head and spoke "No. Always dog. Still dog."

Frowning she said "Explain."

Brutus struggled for a way to put what he knew and experienced into words "Was given power to protect by the Dog. Needed. Great danger coming."

His Master studied him before accepting what he had said and help him get to his feet. As he used her body to stabilize himself his new from began to react to her close proximity to him. She noticed his sudden attraction to her and cocked her head to side. He made no moves, she was the Alpha and he would not make any presumptions. After a moment she gave her approval and she kissed him.

* * *

01/16/11

Brad took in the remaining parahumans of the Empire at the table, over the past week their numbers had shrunken greatly. First they lost Othala to Oni Lee and with her gone there numbers started to suffer due to the gang war to avenge her and the lack of healing that she used to provide them. Victor lost his leg in the same fight that they lost Othala in, trying to keep his wife safe from that slant eyed mongrel. And without Othala to heal him, he was bed ridden and would be of no use what so ever.

Rune was now out for the count now as well. She was paralyzed from the waist down from when Oni Lee had kicked off her floating platform. Hookwolf was looking forward to ripping that chink bastard to shreds for all the damage he had done. Unfortountly nobody had seen hide nor hair of him since Lungs demise. But soon as he resurfaced Oni Lee was a dead man walking.

Things had to start to look up after Lung's sudden death. With only the Merchants left, all be it with a much more competent leader, the city would soon be theirs. Then Kaiser, Menja and Fenja bodies were found in Kaiser's pent house melted by what appeared to be acid. Krieg had gone back to Europe saying he needed to go speak with Geselleschaft about the recent developments. Kaiser's son was also missing but frankly Brad didn't give a shit about that useless tub of lard.

With Kaiser gone there was no clear leader so the Empire was falling apart and now Purity was making a power play to try to take over the Empire. Brad sat on one side of the table flanked by Cricket and Storm Tiger. On the other side of the table sat Purity, Crusader, Night, and Fog. Alabaster stood off to the side, not choosing a side to align himself with. Brad growled at Purity "We only have your word that Kaiser made you his heir. I frankly find it hard to believe that he would put you in charge, seeing as you left us and only just came back."

"When Kaiser convinced me to come back, he and came to a agreement that I would eventually inherit the Empire from him." she responded coldly.

Brad snorted "Yeah sure. Nobody else was told about this and then he happened to die a mysterious death of few days after you joined. That is not suspicious at all." Storm Tiger and Cricket let a chuckle and electronic noise that resembled a laugh respectively.

"So you think I managed to get the drop on him, Fenja and Menja, then killed and melted all of them with acid, while leaving the rest of the apartment completely undamaged?" she said with her voice filled with biting sarcasm. "Seeing as both Skidmark and Lung were killed by Necros, it stands to reason that she would have killed Kaiser as well."

"Even if she did, how did she know where he lived? Somebody had to have told her how to find him and according to you with him gone that makes you in charge." He countered.

Purity slammed her hands onto the table and stood up. "Don't you see that this is just what she wants! If we start fighting amongst each other that just makes it easier for her to hunt us all down!"

"I'll take my chances." said Brad "I don't trust you and I am certainly not going to work for you." He stood up and walked towards the door. "I suggest all of you don't listen to shit pouring out her mouth either." Cricket, Storm Tiger, and Alabaster got up to follow him, leaving behind Crusader, Night and Fog.

* * *

01/13/11

Erik stared dispassionately at the screen before him taking in all of the new data points that had sprung up over the last few days. Due to the actions of Discord and the new boom of 'Singer' parahumans created by Necros, the numbers had been changing so rapidly lately that he had to throw all of his old calculations out the window. Part of him felt irritated that all of his old projections were now completely useless while another part of him was eager to start crunching the new figures and making new projections.

Discord had stopped moving in straight line once it hit the Pacific Ocean and now appeared to teleporting all over the globe causing chaos were ever it showed up. Most unsettling was when the Doctor order Contessa to corral it, so that they could limit the damage that it was causing to their plans, her power started to laugh hysterical and apparently said "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope."

They fortunately had more success learning about the Singers. They had sent Contessa out to collect several Singers for study. They now knew that all the Singers lack the Corona Pollentia that both natural and Cauldron parahumans acquired after triggering. They also all claimed that they were given their powers by a patron. They had something like a trigger vision only they did not see Scion and his counterpart.

Instead their Entities varied from Singer to Singer: a Bull, something called the Creator, the Moon, a Thunder Bird, and one even claimed that God himself had gifted him with powers. Was this one Entity posing as many different beings or was a whole host of new Entities? Neither was good by the later was much worse. Were they working with Scion or against him? They knew frustratingly little and the ramblings that got from their subjects were not much help in enlightening them.

1/17/11

Erik stood there at his desk taking sips of coffee as he typed away, entering all the data and numbers to make a new projection. After four whole days of work he was fairly sure he had finally gotten solid results. After reexamining his work to make sure that he accounted for everything he closed his laptop and headed to speak to the Doctor. Few minutes later he entered her office and sat down in front of the desk she was working at, behind the Doctor Contessa stood guard as usual. The Doctor looked up at him and said "What are the numbers?"

"Based on current projections roughly .4% of humanity can become Singers. They will outnumber parahumans 16 to 1 by the end of the month, unless we have more luck in suppressing the video before it becomes viral. If we fail to do so then we are looking at moving up societal collapse by over a decade." replied Erik.

"We have not met anymore success in having Contessa suppress the video and have give up on doing so. When she used the Path to remove all instances of the song she would seemingly succeed until it was reposted else were moments after she was done. When she tried to track down were it was coming from she received no information similar to when dealing with a Endbringer or Scion." answered the Doctor

"Should we collect Necros then? I have confirmed it was her voice that appeared in the song. She would no doubt be able to shed some light on what is happening." asked Erik.

The Doctor frowned in thought before saying "I had already attempted to do so, but she appears to have a anti-thinker power that affects precognition. When Contessa activated her path she did a cart wheel and started to make out with Alexandria." Was it Erik's imagination or was Contessa blushing?

"Since we also have no idea how her powers even works, we have no way of knowing if we can even contain her if we brought her here. For now we are going to leave her where she is. Even if she caused a great deal of trouble for us, she also increased parahuman numbers greatly, which will aid us against Scion. If she is continues doing things like this we might gain another Eidolon or similar trump cards against Scion. For now we will have to work on enacting the parahuman feudal lord scenario sooner than we thought we would, if want to keep any semblance of order."

* * *

01/18/11

Sarah looked over at Amy and could not help but think about the events of the last week. After the incident with Necros and Amy's breakdown, Carol and Victoria had wanted to go out exact their revenge on Necros, but Amy managed convinced them that Necros hadn't meant to hurt her and Necros's power had been messing with Necros's own head to the point that she couldn't even remember who she was. They grudgingly went along with Amy's wishes, but Sarah was pretty sure if Necros ever showed ever showed her face around them thing would get ugly fast.

Since then the whole of New Wave had made sure that someone was always with Amy to keep her from dwelling on what happened. Over the past week Amy seemed to be getting better and today even asked to go out. So all of the female members of New Wave went to Boardwalk to go window shopping. Sarah and Carol chatted as they moved through the boardwalk while Amy, Crystal and Victoria were walking slightly ahead with Victoria talking up a storm.

As they turned the corner they saw three human looking creatures made of ice running out of a jewelry store with bags thrown over their backs. Behind them was a overweight man in a mask and robe, huffing and puffing while trying to keep up with them. "Hahahaha! Come my minions we must return to our lair!"

All of New Wave just stood there and stared at the scene in disbelief, before moving quickly to intercept him. "You're not going anywhere, uh whoever you are?" said Victoria.

"Hahahahaha! It is I Loki!" said Loki.

"Ugh not another Nazi." said Victoria.

"I am not a Nazi! Loki and Norse gods were around long before Nazis ever existed!" he yelled

"Didn't Loki have sex with a horse. Do you have a horse fetish?" piped up Victoria. Carol gave her disapproving look but Victoria pretended not to notice.

"I... what... no. Maybe I should change my name. Let's see here... Trickster. Yes! Trickster shall be my name henceforth!" Trickster exclaimed.

"Isn't there already somebody named Trickster?" asked Crystal.

"Damn it! Then I shall be Trickstah!" yelled Trickstah.

"Are you for real?" said Victoria in a deadpan voice.

"Real as my illusions!" he bellowed.

"So not real at all?" she replied.

"S-shut up! Now face my ice giants! Attack!" Trickstah screamed and pointed at them.

Victoria made sure to place herself between Trickstah and Amy while the rest of New Wave paired off against his constructs. Sarah blasted hers with beam only for it to ignore the attack and keep charging at her. She quickly threw up a shield preventing it from landing a blow on her before she flew back to create distance between them. It took off into air after her hurling while throwing large balls of ice at her.

Sarah heard Victoria yell "Mom, switch!", but was too busy dealing with her opponent to look over. She fired another beam but this time cranked up the intensity of the beam, blowing a hole through the ice creatures chest. It then immediately vanished into thin air. Looking around she saw that Carol was now guarding Amy while Victoria and Crystal were making short work of their opponents.

"You may have defeated my ice giants, but I will not go down so easily!" Trickstah raved at them. "For I am the great Lo- mean Tric-" only for him to be interrupted by Victoria punching him in the chest. He exploded in shower of blood and guts covering Victoria from head to toe.

"Buh." said Victoria as they all stared in horror at the scene before them.

"Ohohohohoh! Fools!" they heard from behind them. Trickstah was standing on the roof of the building behind them laughing.

"You motherfucker! I am going to shove my foot so far done your throat that there will be shit in my shoe" screamed Victoria

"Language!" snapped Sarah without thinking.

"You are no match for my illusions!" boasted Trickstah. "In fact I have already escaped with the jewels. So long ladies!" Trickstah then seemed to melt into nothingness right before their eyes.

"We did not just lose to him. Tell me did not just lose to that dumbass." said Victoria through grounded teeth.

"There, there." said Amy patting her on the back.

"By the way you're grounded." said Carol.

* * *

1/19/11

Taylor decided that maybe hide and seek was not the best mother-son game choice as Mt. Flufflekins tried to ineffectually hide behind a tree of ash. As she racked her brains for a game that could play together Mr. Nibbles waddled into her lodge. "Hi Mr. Nibbles!" she exclaimed with a wave.

Mr. Nibbles took in the room and Mt. Flufflekins, but seemed unfazed by the changes. "Hello. I see that you have been busy."

"Yeah! I made a new friend she does magical experiments and stuff, like dick explosions, she is so cool! Also I adopted my new son! This week has been great." she said happily. "I have been trying to teach Mt. Flufflekins English. Show him Mt. Flufflekins"

" **HEWO MISTA NIBS**." boomed Mt. Flufflekins. Taylor beamed up at him. She was so proud of him, he was learning so fast, she needed to think of away to reward him for all his hard work.

"Well that explains why your souls are tied together like that. I see you kept exploring this place even though what happened last time. I can't say that I am surprised." he mused out loud.

"Why wouldn't I be going exploring after last time?" asked Taylor. Last time was when she met her son after all, which was without a doubt the happiest moment of her life.

Mr. Nibbles just shrugged and asked "So no problems then?"

"Nope. Wait there was something I wanted to ask you but I can't seem to remember what. Hmmm." said Taylor scrunching up her face in thought.

'What was it I wanted to ask again?' It was something important... maybe? It was so hard to think without booze inside her system. Hmmm booze. Taylor's eyes glazed over and started to drool till Mr. Nibbles made a impatient sound and bopped her gently on the head. Taylor let out a squeak of surprise and toppled over landing on her butt. Fortunately that bop on the head triggered her memory and she recalled what she had wanted to ask. Sitting up Taylor exclaimed "Hey I need help navigating this place! Can you show me around?"

"No" replied Mr. Nibbles.

"Why not! I know that you are busy with your thingy majig, but I can follow you around and stuff!" she shouted angrily.

With a sigh Mr. Nibbles spoke "There are several reasons why not. First do you remember when I told you about space and time acting weirdly around." That sounded vaguely familiar now that he mentioned it, so Taylor nodded. "Well if we both started in the same place and took a step forward we would move at different rates. In ten seconds I could have moved three feet and you could have moved ten miles. We would lose each other almost instantly."

"The best we could do was choose a destination before we start and then travel there separately. The problem with that option is that you might arrive a week ahead of me and since your time is limited you would wake up before I even got there. Even if I got there first I honestly don't have time to sit around waiting for whenever you are going to show up." he continued.

"So that means Mt. Flufflekins and I couldn't travel together either?" Taylor said filled with disappointment. She was really looking forward to going on mother-son trips with him, exploring all the cool new places in here. She really didn't want Mt. Flufflekins going off by himself either. It was dangerous here and he could get hurt if she was not there to protect him. Stewing in her disappointment she struggled to think of something, anything that would make moving around safer.

"Hey so if something critical comes up and I need to talk to you, is there any way I could get a hold of you, like with a phone or something?" Taylor queried.

"I..." started Mr. Nibbles before trailing of in thought. He tapped his foot and cocked his head to side as he seemed to be trying to puzzle something out. He suddenly started to retch and cough up a hair ball, made of fire and lightning, big as Taylor's head. "Right. So if you speak within a few feet of this I should be able to hear you no matter where I am. I can't speak back and give you an immediate reply like what you want, but I will know that you need to get in touch with me and I can swing by here sooner than usual. That is the best I can do."

"Thanks." said Taylor as she poked the hair ball. It was squishy and warm. "Oh! So awake me is trying to build up some defenses around her lodge. Since you do warding and stuff I figured that you would know I thing or two about that."

"I do know several things that could enhance the wards around your lodge." began Mr. Nibbles, "But unless you infuse a piece of yourself into the new ward, like with quickening, then the enhancements will wear off and you will have to put them up again regularly. Also since you are the only mage casting the ritual you can only add so much power, so they would be rather weak, unless you find other mages to help you."

Taylor gave a nod and said "Okay then I would like to learn quickening and some defensive wards then."

Mr. Nibbles squinted at her as though he was trying to find something. After a moment he straightened up and nodded so he must of found whatever he was looking for. He wrapped Taylor with his tail and sent pulse of energy along it into her body. Taylor felt her very being was being stretched and not stretched at the same time. It was like her insides were expanding while her body's shape remained unchanged. She could feel her very essence push against her flesh trying to escape her, but her body held firm.

After several minutes Mr. Nibbles unwound his tail from her and she slumped to ground, she was to drained to stand up on her own. As she lay there recovering, magical formulas flitted through her mind. She... she understood now what she need to do. It was so obvious she couldn't understand why she never thought of it before. She could just tie the spell into a mobius strip and all it took just a fraction of her life energy to make it self-sustaining. It was ingenious. Her mind whirled at the possibilities and huge grin appeared on her face.

"Hey you okay?" asked Mr. Nibbles. Taylor tried to nod her head but she couldn't raise her neck quite yet, so she gave him a thumbs up.

"Good, good. So you got quickening down pat then." Thumbs up. "How about the warding." Thumbs up. "Now I am just going to make sure that you understand whatever is going on it that crazy head of yours, so please explain them to me."

After a few minutes Taylor finally felt up to talking and she started to recite what she knew. "Wards stop any astral beings or spells from moving through them. This will stop enemy spirits from eating me in my sleep. It also makes enemy mages drop whatever spells they have up and recast them once inside. It can also prevents people from targeting me with ritual curses if I am inside of barrier during the casting. The first ward that you just gave me is a polarizing ward that it transparent from one side and opaque on the other. People won't be able to spot it from the outside unless they are paying particularly close attention."

"Good. Continue." said Mr. Nibbles.

"The second ward you gave me is an alarm ward. It is deliberately designed to be hard to notice and does not stop anything from moving through it. It will alert me to the presence of astral beings or spells if they move through it. If a mage sneaks in through my wards then casts spells I will know immediately. Also if I place them around my base I would receive a warning before they approached my real wards." continued Taylor.

"You will need to learn masking and reflection metamagic if you want me to teach the more powerful wards later, but these two should help keep you safe for now." he said. "So before you wake up lets quicken some of your spells."

Taylor heaved herself up and cast armor and deflection. It took her a few castings until she was happy with their strength, she then bound them to her essence, permanently fueling them. Mr. Nibbles gave her a nod of approval and said "Good job. Hopefully those two spells will make up for your lack of survival instinct."

"Uh I had quick question about the songs in the abyss thing. I am trying to figure out which ones are safe." said Taylor.

"Songs? What songs?" said Mr. Nibbles confused. Taylor spent the next five minutes describing what she heard outside in the void. "Huh. Well I don't hear anything like that I just kind of know instinctual where I need to go. As to which ones are safe the answer is simple. None of them are safe. Even the well meaning people here can accidently hurt you since they are all idiots, much like you." he said.

Annoyed Taylor clarified "What things should I avoid in here then?"

"I would say use your common sense but since you clearly don't have any I will have to spell it out for you. Here are things you should never ever ever ever do no matter what. Never drink any blood, never speak to anything with lots of tentacles and to many mouths, never open any cages or undue any seals, never sell your soul to anyone, never agree to do open ended favors, never agree to unspecified conditions, in fact never sign or verbally agree to any contracts I am sure you would fuck it up and for the love all the gods don't put weird shit in your mouth."

Taylor grumbled "I only did that the one time."

"You clearly needed to be reminded on a regular bases if you thought it was a good idea the first time." countered Mr. Nibbles. Taylor felt herself waking up so she gave a quick farewell to Mr. Nibbles and a see you soon to Mt. Flufflekins.


	9. Day 18

1/20/11

You wake up to Mt. Flufflekins bouncing on your stomach excitedly and squawking "Time to get up Momma."

You reach up and pat him on the head before saying "Good morning Mt. Flufflekins." You gentle move him off your stomach and quickly get dressed, putting on the clothes and body armor that the Hollow Man got for you earlier this week. He politely asked you to 'please not get any smaller since getting body armor in child size is already quite difficult', he was pretty sure that toddler sized flak jackets did not exist. You told him that you couldn't make any promises, but you wouldn't try to get any smaller.

You rummage through the ice box that the Hollow Man put in your room and pull out food for you and Mt. Flufflekins. After you are both done eating you head out to main area eager to get started on your various projects. As you walk through the entrance you take in your new and improved lodge. You spent a great deal of time and energy powering up your lodge and are quite proud of it. You would have finished it faster but you needed to recharge your healing circles regularly.

When you started to power up your lodge once more, the various shapes on the wall peeled off and began to move around your forest singing their songs. For some reason your minions are unnerved by them, you assured them that they are intangible and they don't eat human flesh, but that did not seem to comfort them at all.

Next you repainted the walls since they were now bare. You drew a portrait of a mountain range sized dragon that wraps all around the room. Despite the size of the wall you manage to capture its size properly making the whole room and all its occupants seem tiny and insignificant. When you are finished drawing it becomes animated and the dragon seems to watching those inside of its embrace, guarding them threats from the outside.

The day after that you carved a intricate circle, along the edges of the walls, into the ground with the help of Mt. Flufflekins sharp claws. Once you were done carving, you pumped your necrotic energies into the array and the ground warped and changed into a vast smiling eye staring up from a black void that never seemed to end. You are not sure how it is smiling without a mouth, but you know for sure that it is friendly and not plotting the end of all life.

You put on the finishing touches on your wards yesterday by removing all the old lighting. First you unscrewed all the light spheres and made it so that only the flaming sigils above lit the room. You then made ornate paper lanterns in various seven dimensional shapes and sizes. You then placed them around the sigils, changing the color of the lighting in the room to colors that people do not even have words for.

Now that you are finally done raising the power of your lodge and you are ready to mount your offense against the last two great bastions of evil remaining in the city. Nothing shall keep from plotting your plots. Nothing! As you go to speak to the Hollow Man you feel something bump into your wards. You sync with your lodge and see what is outside that is attempting to enter.

You see a person in star covered robes and a pointy hat, with the most amazing beard you ever seen. It is pure white and reaches down to their waist, so majestic. You know instantly that they must be a great wizard, since only a true archmage could grow a beard so luxurious. For some reason their beard is white while they have black hair with a blonde streak, but you can only assume magic is involved. It seems that they had a invisibility spell up and so bumped into your wards. You are kind of surprised that a wizard of that caliber of beard would not know that spells can't pass through wards uninvited. Maybe they are drunk, if they are you are super jealous.

Well whoever they are you should got out and greet them, it would be rude to just leave them outside waiting for a response. You scoop up Mt. Flufflekins and zoom towards the entrance of your headquarters. You stop in front of your bearded visitor and say "Hi I am Taylor!" you then present Mt. Flufflekins and lets a impressive and adorable roar "and this is Mt. Flufflekins. Who are you!"

He? She? Man you are so bad at gender. They have mostly feminine features, but the beard indicates that they are male. Although you have heard of bearded ladies before. You are unsure how to ask, since there is no good way to ask somebody what their gender is supposed to be and you should know after that that last kerfuffle. How were you suppose to know that the local God Empress would take offense? While she had been pretty cranky at least her dungeons had been pretty nice, no bed bugs or anything.

Hmm you think you will go with 'they' for now. They give you a surprised look and say "I'm Gandalf the Black." They throw out there arms and in their right hand they hold a staff with raven feathers tied to top. "All who desire to keep their pants fear me!" Good thing you have never worried about that in all your lives.

"It's nice to meet you Gandalf! So what brings you here."

"I uh saw your glowy thing and I wanted to check it out." they say pointing behind you.

Hmmm. Your lodge is pretty noticeable in astral space now that you think about it. On the outside it appears to be a bright multicolored pillar of light about fifty or so feet tall. You should probably do something about that later, but right now is time of making new friends. "I am surprised you didn't recognize wards, what with your beard and all, are you new to magic or something?"

"Yeah I have been only doing this shit for like a week or so." That just makes the beard even more impressive in your opinion. They sure grew it fast. "Raven didn't tell me jack shit, except for a few spell and to go cause chaos. Pranking people is fun and all, but I feel like I should be doing more, you know?"

"You are not here to prank me are you?" you say with narrowed eyes. Raven's chosen our tricky folks and you will probably have to keep a eye on them so they don't go messing around with your stuff.

"Hey I would never prank you, you are the cold stone motherfucker that killed Lung. You are Necros right?" they ask.

"Yep that's me!" you say. "Also I wouldn't worry about your spirit quest too much. As long as you follow the general guidelines you should be fine."

They give you a nod and then seem to brighten up "Hey you know a lot about magic and shit right? Do you think you could teach me to badass as you are?"

Your eyes widen in surprise and you let a squee of delight. You hug Gandalf and say "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh it is going to be so great! I haven't had an apprentice in such a long time, not after the last one got eaten by a grue!" Gandalf makes a chocking noise but you are too busy being happy to notice. "We'll have so much fun and hopefully nothing will eat you!" You had a bad string of luck with your last 48 apprentices getting eaten by various exotic and deadly fauna and sometimes flora, but you're sure that number 49 is going to be the end of the streak of gruesome and violent deaths!

"Maybe this isn-" they began nervously. Oh no! They are having second thoughts! Quickly distract them before they change their mind!

You quickly speak above any hypothetical objection that they could possibly have "Well now that it's settled! Time to get to work!"

"Bu-" they began before you cut them off again.

"Sorry no time to dilly dally, we need to start right away! If you don't know how to put up wards your life could be endangered from all sorts of things!" you say as you're pulling them into your lodge.

As you pull them behind you, you hear them exclaim "Holy shit!"

You look behind you but you don't see anything strange. "Huh? What's the matter?"

"Why is there a giant eye staring up at me from the floor! How is it smiling without a mouth!" they say panic entering their voice.

"Tell me about it! We tried to explain to her that it is pants shitingly freaky, you just know if you take your eyes off it for a second it will be the last thing you do, but she thinks it's cute. " yells one of your insubordinate minions.

You send him a glare and say "Smiley the Eye is not scary! Don't listen to them Smiley, you are quite dashing." Smiley stares intensely at you in what you can only assume is gratitude.

"And the reason you made the floor appear to be an endless void that can swallow us up at any moment and we can never escape from, so no one will ever hear our screams is?" the meany face snarks. You choose not the dignify his question with a response and turn your attention back to your apprentice.

Gandalf seems to be hyperventilating for some reason as she takes in your lodge. Maybe they are nervous they can't live up to your example? Well they shouldn't worry too much, it takes years of practice to be as amazing as you. "Hey don't worry about it. I know it is a lot to take in all at once, but one day you'll have a lodge just like me."

"Lodge?" they ask while looking at the floor. Gandalf is not able to take their eyes off Smiley for some reason.

"A lodge is the center of magic users power. It is their home, lab, sanctuary, and many other things. It is essential if you wish to learn any magic at all." you say.

They tears her gaze from Smiley and says with trepidation "And my lodge will look like this?"

"Well no. Each lodge is a reflection of the mage's soul. The tools to make it depend on the person making it. It could be anything from a library to a kitchen to a outhouse. You can generally tell what kind of person a mage is from looking at their lodge." you explain.

If anything they look more unnerved then before. After a moment they pull themselves together and ask "Right so how do I make a lodge anyway?" You enthusiastically start to explain to your apprentice the various steps needed to set up a lodge. She interrupts you a few times for clarification, but by the end of your lecture she seems to know what to do. "Where do you think I should put up my lodge?" asks your apprentice.

Hmmm. You need to consider your apprentice's question seriously before you give them an answer. You don't want to lose this one like 34 who decided to make their home in what later turned out to be a greater mimic, so you should make sure that where ever they set up you know that it is safe first. Besides your own base of operations you can't think of anything that you know is a hundred percent safe. Now that you think about it, having them set up here first is probably for the best you can keep a close eye on them and stop them from being devoured by ogres like 26. She always liked to wander, that one.

"Well" you say "I got room in here for you as well if you want. If you stay here I can make sure that your going about it the right way and you wouldn't have to travel to speak with me. Also I could keep you safe from threats like randy dragons." Poor poor 12, fucked to death and then eaten by that great wyrm. He should have never agreed to 'having a little dragon put in him.'

"Randy dragons?" asks Gandalf.

You nod vigorously and explain "There is no race more horny then the dragon race, they make succubi look like prudes. They will literally fuck anything with a hole. There was this one time I ran into half-green dragon toads, beetles, squirrels, slugs, and a bush all in the same forest." Gandalf takes a step back and eyes Mt. Flufflekins warily. "Oh you don't have to worry about him. Mt. Flufflekins is still a growing boy, it should be a couple of decades still he enters the man whore stage of dragon hood."

"If you say so. So what do you think I will need for my lodge?" they ask.

"Well whatever speaks to you, I guess? No two mages lodge is the same. The objects just have to be symbolically important to your style of magic." you say.

"What styles are there?" they reply.

"Well let's see here... using mathematics and formula to create spells, being one with nature and it grants you power, having no idea what you are doing but it just comes to you naturally, praying to a high power, being possessed by conglomeration of insane wild mages and driven to insanity... hmm what else." you lecture.

"I'll do the comes to naturally one. That one sounds like it would be the least amount of work." they say.

"In that case when making your lodge, buy a bunch of different things then just kind of turn your brain off and go on auto-pilot." you reply.

"Cool. How long is this going to take?" they ask.

"About 12 hours a day for..." you pause as you examine their aura "six days."

"Shit. My brother will probably go nuts looking for me if I am missing that long." they say.

"Uh why don't you just tell him where you are?" you ask confused.

"I love my brother and stuff, but he would freak the fuck out if he found I was hanging around here and try to stop me from coming back. It would better if he just never found out." they says.

"You shouldn't hide anything from your family you know. It just makes them worry about you." you say without a trace of irony.

They make a face and say "You don't get it, he is a total kill joy. I don't know how your family is, but they aren't has obsessively protective as he is, if they let you hang out here."

"Well it just my son and my... oh shit Dad!" When was the last time you have seen your Dad?! It has been at least two weeks. Shit shit shit. He must be freaking the fuck out. Why didn't this occur to you sooner!? You pull out you talky box and dial your home array quickly as you can. Unfortunately you all you get is the answering machine.

You want to cuss out the answering machine but you manage to restrain yourself. The last thing your Dad needs to hear is curse laden message from you after over two weeks of no contact. Well since you are on the phone anyway you might as well leave a message for him. "Hey Dad it's Taylor. Uh sorry I didn't call earlier, but up till twenty seconds ago I forget that you even existed. Shit that sounds bad when I say it aloud. Fuck, I didn't mean the swear. Shit cock! Sorry Dad. So ummm I have been good. How about you? Oh wait your answering machine you can't talk back to me... or can you? Maybe you're a magic answering machine. Well if you are magic you are being very rude by not talking back."

"Anyway where was I? Oh yeah. Things have been good the last couple of weeks for me. I made a some new friends with like the Hollow Man and the Merchants. I am not doing drugs if that's what your worried about though. I wouldn't D.A.R.E. to do that. Get it? Oh! You have a new grandson! His name is Mt. Flufflekins and he is the cutest baby ever! He is so smart. He is already speaking English after only a week. Now I know what you're thinking, who is the father? Well the thing is I don't remember, but I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. This thing just sorta happen from time to time you know?" you ramble into your talky box.

"Let's see. Let's see, so I have also been fighting crime and stuff. You know killing bad dudes, taking loot, burning down a few houses, kidnapping folks. The usual. Oh! I met this girl and I like her, and I thought she liked me as well, but then she turned out to be gay. And then she wouldn't even take my dick when I offered it to her. I am not really sure where to go from there in seducing her. You seduced Mom right? How would you go about seducing a sexy blonde that was gay? Well anyway if you want to reach me, just call me back out the number on your talky box. I should get back to soon unless I lose my pants again. Love you."

You think that went well. You wait patiently for him to respond, but after ten seconds you can't take it anymore. Where is he?! Well it still is the middle of the day so maybe he is at work? You dial his work number and get another answering machine, but it's not your Dad's voice and the name given is Frank.

That is weird, did your Dad get fired? Maybe he spent the last two weeks looking for you and skipped work, so they let him go. Now you feel even more guilty about not getting back to him sooner. Well at least you got lots of loot from taking over the Merchants and the Hollow Man raiding old ABB supply houses, so you should be able to support your Dad.

Well if he is out looking for you he won't get your message until he gets home anyway, so you might as well head over there now. You look over at Gandalf the Black and say "I uh got family stuff to do today. So here is my phone number call me when you figure out what you are going to do about your brother."

"Yeah I'll think of something and get back to you." grumbles Gandalf. "Here's my number as well."

You give them a quick hug and head out with Mt. Flufflekins. It takes you awhile to get to your house since you have trouble remembering where it is, but after a couple of hours you manage to locate it. When you fly up to your house your stomach drops. The front door has been kicked in and you see caution tape around the entrance. With dread you make your way to the door way and look at the tape. It says 'Do not cross. Crime scene. PRT.' Something inside of you snaps.

Your vision goes red and you let out a raw feral noise of pure unadulterated _**hate**_ _._ So the PRT decided to kill your father when they failed to kill you did they. Oh they shall pay. They. Shall. _**Pay.**_ Nobody fucks with you like this and gets to live. You would have gone to destroy them already, but you are so angry that you can't even move from this spot. You can't even think you are so pissed, the pounding in your head drives away all thoughts.

As you stand there paralyzed by your hate you feel a bumping sensations against your leg and you turn to vent your wrath on whatever dares disturb you when you see it is your son. Shame fills you as you stare down at Mt. Flufflekins, you almost lashed down at your son in your frenzy. You are terrible mother.

You slump down on to the porch and began to cry. Mt. Flufflekins makes a whining noise and licks your cheeks causing you to giggle. You embrace your son close to your chest and let your love for him wash through you. He really is the best thing that ever happened to you. After a minute of this you stand back up, with Mt. Flufflekins in your arms, feeling much calmer than before. Oh you are still angry beyond words, but it is now a cold hard anger that you can control. You stare up at the house that used to be your sanctuary against the world and feel the desire to go inside.

You cut down the vile tape of evil and enter your house. You move through your house slowly with dread, you don't particularly want to find the scene of your father's death, but at the same time you do. Much to your confusion the first floor of your house seems mostly untouched and you don't find much damage. The chair in front of the TV was knocked over, but that was about it. You were at least expecting some blood stains or something? Did they clean up after themselves? You don't think so judging by the door and the chair.

You would assume they found your Dad here since they flipped the chair and all, but maybe they took him to the second floor or something. You guess they could have just flipped the chair out of their desire to be evil douche bags? The second floor much like the first is mostly undisturbed, but as you look around your room you notice that it looks like people have been through your thing. Did they loot your room!? Dicks! Still no signs someone was killed here though, unless they smothered your Dad with pillow or something, but you can't think of why they would bother though.

Maybe... maybe he is still alive? The PRT could have kidnapped your Dad for information on you. They could be torturing him right now just for their sick pleasure. You need to save him right away! As you consider your plan of attack your talky begins to ring. Who could be calling you? Wait you left without telling the Hollow Man didn't you? Well in your defense you were worried about your Dad. You flip open your talky box and say "Hello?"

"Argh my head!" says someone one the other side. They sound like a teenagerish female.

"That's nice?" you say confused. Did they call you to let you know that their head hurt. That seems pretty weird to you to be honest. You suspect whoever you are talking to is not all there in the head.

"Look the PRT know where you are and are heading over right now. I know where your dad is, but I can't talk to you if they show up so you need to go right now." she says.

Wait what? "Wait how do you know my number or that the PRT are coming to my house or even were my Dad is?" you demand. How in the world could she know all these things? Is she spying on you? Do you have a creepy stalker? You are baffled that she could have monitored you so thoroughly since you are so observant. As you wait for her reply you leave the house, since you don't particular want to face the PRT on their terms and since you are just leaving the area, and not to a specific location, it is not like you are walking into a trap or anything.

"The PRT bugged your house's phone in the hopes that you would call home at some point. When you left that message on the answering machine you gave your phone number." says your informant.

The PRT listened to your private message between you and your dad!? Those cunts! How rude can you get! You should also probably switch phones or something, so they don't leave you annoying messages and call you in the middle of the night. Fuming you say "So you are part of the PRT then or something."

"No my boss has spies in the PRT and has me monitoring them." she explains. So her boss must be part of some rebel movement against the local evil lord and his men then. You suppose they could be useful allies if this is not a trap. "As to how the PRT and I know where you are... well you aren't exactly subtle. People can see you flying around and they also have two people monitoring your house in case you ever went back."

Huh, you hadn't thought of that. You quickly make you and Mt. Flufflekins invisible, before changing your direction to throw off anybody tracking you. "So you know where the PRT is holding my Dad then."

"What?" she says in surprise "Why would you... the PRT didn't kidnap your dad. My boss did."

Okay now you are totally confused. Why would the rebellion kidnap your dad. That doesn't make any sense. Maybe this a PRT agent trying to pit you against the rebels, hoping you are going to wipe the rebels out for them. "Why would the rebellion kidnap my dad?" you ask with a doubt filled voice.

"Rebellion? What in the world are you talking about? No my boss is criminal and kidnapped your dad in hopes in using your dad as leverage against you to make you work for him. But he has changed his mind and decided that he just want to kill you. He wants to use your dad as bait to lure you into a trap." she says.

That... seems pretty unlikely to you. Why the PRT be at your house, it's not like they would be investigating a crime or anything. "If he is your boss why are you telling all this to me?" you ask.

"He forced me to work for him and you mess up his power, so you could be my ticket to being rid of him." she says. "If we work together we can free your dad and I can be rid of my asshole boss. It is a win-win."

You bite your lip as you consider her offer. A lot of it does not add up when you think about it, but on the other hand if she is telling the truth it means that you could get the location of your dad from her. The reward is far greater than the risk. "Alright, so what is the plan then?" you ask.

"My boss, Coil, has the ability to grant himself second chances and you apparently fuck up how it works somehow. He now has your phone number because of the message you left on your dad's machine and like I said earlier he is planning on contacting you soon to lure you into a trap, using your dad as bait." she explains.

"Okay then I will simple ignore him then." you say.

"Yeah that is not going to fly. If he thinks your dad is useless he is just going to dispose of your dad. We need him to think that you will do whatever he says to keep your dad alive." Wow what a prick. You should probably torture him a little before killing him."No we need to make him think that you are walking into the trap if you want your dad back alive." she says

"Why don't I just go to your boss's base is right now spring my dad out. That sounds much more simple if you ask me." you ask.

"While I have eliminated enough places to figure out where my boss's lair is, the problem is that it is basically a bunker and he has his own private well funded army of mercenaries. So getting your dad out of there without him dying is unlikely." she says.

"Does his base have wards or anything?" you ask.

"Um no." she says confused.

"Would Colin's dudes have things like rocket launchers? Cause if not then a single one of my spirit buddies could massacre their way through the base." Jeez how could he skimp on such an obviously necessary security feature. Some people are so careless, unlike you, you are always thinking ahead.

"They have tinker tech laser guns, would those be able to hurt your spirits?" she asks.

"Those are the enchanted items right? Yeah those could probably hurt them." Damn. Well you suppose you could send a spirit to sneak your dad out of the base, but if they get caught that would probably be bad. "So what is your plan for getting my dad back."

"Coil is going is going to set up a meeting with claiming he wants to speak you to discusses his terms for your dad's release. Knowing him he is going to send a body double and have his mercs ambush you. I can't say for sure where he is going to have you go, but knowing him it will be secluded and set up so you can't leave easily." she says. "He really wants you died so he is going to send the majority of his men to fight. He will also have your dad there so you will be distracted the whole fight trying to keep your dad alive."

"What we are going to do is have you wait outside his base for him to call you. You agree to the meeting and when he mobilizes his men you can sneak into the convoy and get your dad out." she continues.

"What about Coin?" you ask. You would really like to get your hands on the asshole that hurt your dad.

"Well if you manage to get your dad out without raising the alarm they should keep heading to the rendezvous point before they notice your dad is gone, leaving Coil exposed. If you move quickly you could take him out as well." she says.

"You got yourself a deal." you say.

"Okay so..." she rattles off the address. It takes you a couple of minutes to figure out where it is on your map it is but you get it marked down. "...you got about twenty minutes before he is going to call you, so you're going to want to hurry to his base."

"Cool. If all goes well Coitus should be dead by the end of the day." you say causing your informant to let out a giggle.

"God I can't tell if you are doing that on purpose or not." she said amused.

"Doing what?" you ask confused.

"Never mind. Good luck with your dad." she says before ending the connection.

You summon the wind spirit Zephyr-in-the-Storm and have him boost yours and Mt. Flufflekins speed. It takes you about a couple of minutes to reach the general area of Connor's base. After a few more minutes you are pretty sure that you have located the exterior of his base, you then set your look out spot on a roof of nearby building. As you sit there waiting for the call, you remember that you never called the Hollow Man to let him know that you left. You pull out your talky box and pushes the runes quickly. After the ringing stops you hear the Hollow Man speak "Necros is something the matter?"

"Um yeah... so remember how I said I would let you know when ever I went out? The thing is..." you trail off guiltily. You broke your promise and your having trouble copping up to it, you just know the Hollow Man is going to be so disappointed in you.

You hear him let a sigh and say "Where are you Necros?"

"I am outside Colt's headquarters." you tell him.

"Who?" he asks.

"Um he kidnapped my dad and apparently has an army of mercenaries." you say wracking your brains for detail about Cog that you know. You should have probably asked what he looked like know that you think about it. Well live and learn things man ought not to know you always say.

"Wait you have a father?" he asked confused. "I thought you didn't remember your past."

"I just remembered him today and went to go say hi when I found out he was kidnapped by the leader of the local resistant movement. You know Cobweb or something."

There is a silence on the other end before he speaks up "You mean Coil?"

"Yeah that sounds right." you confirm.

"Do you know the address of the building?" he asks. You quickly rattle of the location and he says "Don't do anything until I get there."

"I don't know if I can do that. The thing is Cowboy is moving my dad from his base to the ransom location soon and that is the best time to retrieve my dad."

The Hollow Man lets out a curse and says "I will try to get there as quickly as possible. If I don't arrive in time be careful." He ends the call and you turn back to your vigil.

After a few minutes you your talky box starts to jingle and jangle so you answer it "Hello?"

"Hello Necros you don't know me but my name is Coil. I have a job offer for you." Huh? That's not what the phone lady said he would say. Maybe she was PRT stooge after all.

"I don't really need a job, I already run a merchants guild fulltime." you say confused.

"Hmm that is a _shame_ you I was just talking with your _father_ here and seemed to think that you were perfect for the job." he said. Man he talks weird he keeps empathizing words at weird places. It is good to know that he saved your dad from the PRT, that informant was full of crap.

"Oh you know where my dad is that's great! So you to are friends or something?" you say.

"You could say _that_." he says with is bizarre tone.

"Oh thank gods. I thought he was kidnapped or something." you say.

There is a silence on the other end for a moment before he says "I feel like you don't understand what I am trying to say here."

You don't? You were pretty sure you were on the ball here. "If you say so?" you say puzzled.

He makes that sighing noise that people seem to make a lot and says "I kidnapped your father and if you don't work for me I am going to hurt him."

"I am going to skull fuck you!" you scream into the phone in rage. How dare he! Your informant was right. This guy is evil.

"Now, now don't forget your manners young lady." says the Prick. "If you want your father to keep all of his fingers you are going to do what I say."

Fuming you grunt out a "Fine."

"Excellent so here is what we are going to do. We are going to meet in a place of my choosing in thirty minutes and we are going to talk out terms. To show my good faith I will even let you see your father." the prick says in voice that makes you want to rip his spine from his rectum. He gives you the location and says "Don't be late."

After a couple of minutes you see unmarked vans coming out of a side entrance of the building. It looks like it is go time. As you and Mt. Flufflekins move to follow them your talky box starts to ring again. You quickly answer it expecting the Hollow Man but instead your hear a woman's voice that you don't know. "Taylor I need to speak with-"

"Sorry go to go! I am busy killing some dudes!" you say quickly into your talky box.

"Wait Tay-" she begins to say but you hang up the phone before she has a chance to finish. You know it is rude but your dad's life is on the line. You can apologize later to her or something.

You turn to Mt. Flufflekins and say "Let's roll." He gives you his best serious face which is adorable in your opinion, but you refrain from telling him so. Boys have such fragile egos about that kind of thing. You both take off of the roof and began to follow the vans from up above. You phone starts to jangle some more but you ignore it, you are on the hunt and you don't have time to talk to mysterious phone people.

The vans began to spread out away from each other for some reason, which means that can't all see each other, which only helps you out. You need to figure out which one of the vans has your dad inside of it, so You summon a minor spirit of earth, Crumbling-Mud. You give it a description of your dad and what his aura would probably look like before sending it to scout out the vehicles for you.

After a minute he comes back and points you to correct one. Okay the Informant said if you are sneaky about this you can get back to Coke's base and take him by surprise with his pants down. You are not really sure how you are going to get in and out of the van without being noticed though. You spend a few precious seconds thinking about it before deciding on your course of action. Well if you can't do it yourself just ask a friend for help. You dismiss Crumbling Mud and bring forth the spirit of a nearby building called Al's-Hardware.

You speak quickly to Al's-Hardware explaining the situation best you can to it. It nods along as you speak and gives you a thumbs up to let you know that it understood what you are asking of it. You cast invisibility on to it to help it in its sneaking before it goes to the van that your dad is in. As you wait nervously outside, you keep a eye on the other vans. If they change course at all then you know that the jig is up and the explosion will commence.

You are humming to yourself softly to calm your nerves when the back door to the van is opened by one of the mercs. You see Al's-Hardware fly out with your dad flung over its shoulder and the merc close the door behind it. You and Mt. Flufflekins move to a nearby roof to meet Al's-Hardware. When it lands next to you, you give it a quick thanks and quickly fret over your unconscious dad. You quickly scan his aura to check if anything is wrong with him, but beside the sedatives in his system, he seems fine. You are going to have to wait about half an hour before he wakes though.

You let out a sigh of relief and debrief Al's-Hardware. It informs you that it mind whammied all the occupants of the van and they won't notice anything is wrong until somebody points it out to them or Al's-Hardware returns to the metaplane. Looks like operation rescue Dad super sneaky like was blinding success! You think you got twenty or so minutes before anybody knows your dad is even gone.

You should probably let the mercs drive out further before you attack Cola's base. You can only assume he will call his men back immediately once your attack commences and every extra minute you have to exact your revenge is needed. You fly back to your original look out spot and check the time on your talky box, you got about 14 minutes before they discover your dad is missing. Your talky box is still making a bunch of noise, so with a sigh you open it. Apparently you missed five calls and something called 'text messages' from the Mysterious Phone Lady.

Well you got a few minutes to kill before you began your siege so you decide to call her back. You punch in the proper rune array and you hear the woman's frantic voice "Taylor! Thank god! Please tell me you didn't kill anybody?!"

"Do you mean in like the last hour or ever. Because if you mean ever, I have totally killed some people. If you mean the last hour then, nope." you say.

"That's... well it's not great, but I am glad you didn't kill those people. Look Taylor I know you are confused but you got to stop what you are doing and turn yourself in before things aren't salvageable for you anymore." she says trying to sound calm.

You're confused? You don't feel particularly confused right now. You would say you have pretty good understanding of the situation right now. The PRT kidnapped your dad and then Cots, the leader of the resistance, stole him in the hopes that you would work for him and fight the PRT. He totally blew it though, you would have done that if he just asked, now he gets death by lightning. Anyway who does she mean for you to turn yourself into? "Who I am I suppose to turn myself into for being confused?" you ask.

"The PRT-" she begins, but you stop listening at this point. You roll your eyes and shake your head, god do this people think you are a moron or something? Do they think you forgot about the assassins already? Your mind is like steel trap, it captures and mangles all thoughts that enter your head, leaving them to slowly bleed to death. "-Taylor? Taylor are you still there?"

"Huh? Yeah I am still here and stuff." you say. What were you guys talking about again? Eh. It doesn't really matter. "I forgot what we were talking about, but I need to get going soon. I have to go torture someone to death now and I only have a limited time frame."

"Taylor please stop. If you don't, I will make you." she says with desperation in her voice.

"Hmmm..." you consider her request for a whole half of a millisecond that it deserves before saying "Nope!" You are totes going to get your murder-vengeance on and no PRT stooge is going to convince you otherwise. "Well I would say it has been nice talking to you but that would be a lie. So long you booze hating bast-"

"Wait! I uh want to hear about the virtues of alcohol. I am having second thoughts about abstaining from it and since you are clearly a expert, I thought should ask your opinion." she says totally sincerely.

You are caught between trying to decide whether to convert somebody to the ways of booze or to go kill the punk ass bitch that decided to fuck with you. You are torn greatly by this. You really want to go exterminate him, but on the other hand is it not your sacred duty to help all those on to the path of righteousness. After a moment of indecision you decide to help this wayward soul, you will have another chance to kill Cobbles, but you may not ever have a chance to save Mysterious Phone Lady again.

"Well okay." you say before launching into a full blown lecture about the greatness that is booze. She asks you the occasional question here or there, but she seems to grasp the subject very quickly, it is almost like she knew it all already. You are somewhere around the topic to use of magical mushrooms vs. mundane mushrooms when you feel a frantic tugging on your pant leg. You look down to see Mt. Flufflekins pulling on you. "Just a second my son needs something. What's the matter little guy?"

"Mommy. Up." he says.

"Well okay." you say with a shrug. You scoop your son up for cuddles, but he is squirming around for some reason.

"No. Up." he says.

Huh? What in the world? Its only when you hear the sound of air whooshing that it clicks in your head. You look up just in time to see a mecha-dragon slamming into you. It claws pin you to the roof of the building and you bang your head on the ground. Ouchies. "I am sorry Taylor." comes the voice of the Mysterious Phone Lady from the mecha-dragon. She then opens her mouth to fry you with her flames. Oh the irony, done in the by your love of all things booze. Also now that you think about you were you taken out in ambush just like the Despoiler and the Wyrm were by you. So double irony?

However instead of red hot flames that spell your doom, foam shoots out of her mouth encasing you from head to toe in its gooey embrace. What the fuck. You don't think you have ever heard of a dragon that shoots foam before. Well you are not dead yet so that is a win for you. Your blood freezes when you hear your son's cries of "Momma!" He needs your help!

You scream "Don't worry Momma's coming!"You struggle against the foam but you can't move around at all. You pump electricity into your hands but it has no effect on the foam. You beg Al's-Hardware for assistance and he complies. Suddenly the scent of the air changes and you begin to feel woozy. Wait you recognize that smell! It is sleepy time gas. You don't want to go to sleepy time. Your son and dad need you! You go to summon a more powerful spirit but you are feeling sleepy...

You wake up lying in a surprisingly comfy bed. You turn your head sluggishly to look around. You see that you are in a room with bare steel walls and a solid steel door in front of you with no handle on your side. How did you get here again? You try and remember but you are feeling kind of groggy. Bluh. Your mouth feels like there is cotton in it and your throat is scratchy. You sit up and rub at your eyes sleepily. You then notice that you aren't wearing the clothes that you were wearing last time. They now appear to be grey sweats. You rummage through your new pockets and find all your stuff missing. Did you get robbed?

As you are staring into space trying to puzzle out this enigma, you hear a disembodied voice speak "Taylor? Can you hear me?" She sounds vaguely familiar. You feel like you should be mad at her for some reason but you have trouble putting your finger on what. You give her a tired nod. "Good. I need you to tell your... son to calm down. We can't sedate him and he is panicking since he can't find you."

Son? Hmmmm. Mt. Flufflekins! You look around the room and your son is not here! Where is your son!? You stumble to your feet and feel the grips of panic grab hold of you. "Taylor?" the lying jerk say. "Taylor I need you to listen to me. If you can't get your son to calm down we are going to have to use force and we don't want to do that."

You glare at the general direction of the voice and manage to slur out "Where is he?!"

"He is in a different cell. I need you to tell him to calm down, can you do that?" she asks.

"Fine." you say through clenched teeth.

"Good. Just a second." she says.

You hear the desperate voice of your son "Momma?! Momma?!"

"Momma's okay honey. I need you to calm down, okay? Be a good boy for Momma." you say trying to keep the rage out of voice.

"Momma?" you hear him say.

"I'll see you soon honey, just stay where you are okay?" you say as tears prickle at your eyes.

"Okay Momma." he says.

"Thank you Taylor-" says the Bitch. Oh you are going to make her pay for scaring your son. She. Is. Going. To. Pay. "Taylor are you listening?"

"No." your growl, your voice is trembling with fury.

There is a moment of silence before she speaks up again "I understand why you are angry with me right now Taylor, but I am just trying to help you. Would you prefer it if you were to talk to somebody else?"

You glower in the general direction of the Bitch's voice and say "I would rather be eaten alive by a bunny-stump monster then spend another moment with you! You used booze for evil and trickery, you are a monster!" You hate her so much. So much.

"Okay Taylor." she says sadly. How dare she act like you are being the jerk! She is the jerk! "Just one thing, when you weren't listening earlier-" You promptly stop paying any attention to the words coming out of her lie hole and began to plot your escape.

First thing you need to do is find out where your son and dad are. You know that the PRT have taken your son but you are unsure what is going on with your dad. He was on the roof with you when you were attacked, so you can only assume that the PRT rekidnapped him, but they could have left him on the roof since they are jerks. You can't make up your mind on which one would be a bigger asshole move though. Whichever one is the biggest dick move is obviously the one that they chose.

You quickly summon the spirit of this building, House-Of-Jerks. You ask it to find your dad and son then to come back to you when it succeeds. You then start to examine the room more carefully. The only other way out, then the steel door, is a inch wide grate on the ceiling. You could probably ripe it off and then turn into small bird or something to make your escape. Of course you have no idea where that tube goes, for all you know it could lead to a incinerator. You are unsure how thick the door to the room is, but you should be able to rip through it and if you can't one of your spirit buddies probably could.

Of course if you wanted to be more subtle you could have one of your buddies go around mind whammying people and have them let you out. What else what else... "Taylor are you ignoring me or you out off it cause of the sedative?" says a female voice that vaguely recognize.

"Just scheming." you say.

The woman sighs and you remember were you heard her before. Your pretty sure that is glowy line lady. "Taylor please don't do anything rash okay? You haven't reached the point where we have to send you to jail. We talked to Panacea and we know that your power is messing with your head. We can help you get better."

You glare at the door and say "I don't need to get better! I am fine the way I am. You just want to brainwash me for your evil secret army. Well I am not going to be your slave glowy line lady!"

You hear a snort and giggle followed by a smack. "Taylor we are not trying to enslave you. Also just so you know my name is Battery okay?"

"You named yourself after your love of beating up the innocent! Have you no shame!" you say scandalized. They don't even pretend to hide their evil! Why the people have not risen up against them is beyond you.

"Damn it Assault. Taylor I don't go around attacking people. I named myself after the batteries used to power things." she says.

"Uh huh. If that was true I am sure I would have heard of these 'batteries before now.'" you say skeptically.

You hear her mutter "You try talking to her."

You then her the Kineticist speak up "Hey kid remember me?"

"Yeah. You're the weirdo that names capes." you say.

He chuckles and says "It's good to know that I am remembered for the important things. Look-" House-of-Jerks floats up back next to you and informs you that it has discovered the location of your son and father.

"-your ignoring us again aren't you." says the Kineticist.

You look up and say "A little." You instruct House-Of-Jerks to go up the vent and tell you what is there. "Just thinking about stuff ya know?"

"Sure. Taylor do you even know why you are here?" he asks.

"To brainwash me for your evil army. I am pretty sure I mentioned that earlier. That might have been someone else though, I wasn't paying much attention." you say not really paying attention. At about this point House-Of-Jerks shows back up and informs you about what it has discovered. Apparently the tube leads to a large container of some sort of fluid with a bunch of other tubes attached to the container. You suppose you could swim through the fluid but you don't know what the fluid is. It could be acid or even worse coffee, the anti-booze.

"Yeah you seem to zone out a lot. Are you talking to voice in your head or something?" he says.

"Sometimes. They are mostly compelling me to do various things more then have a dialogue with me. Right now this one is telling me to dance my way to victory. But I am unsure how dancing will help to honest." you say. Hmmm better to not risk going through the fluid. You ask House-Of-Jerks how thick the door in front of you. You want to make sure it's not one of those doors with a wall behind it or whole bunch more doors.

"Uh, okay then?" he says unsure. House-Of-Jerks floats back and informs you that the door is about three inches thick. That would probably take you about six seconds to rend your way through. You got this. "You should probably stop listening those voices since they have you murdering people and all. When you hear voice telling you to burn things, you know that's bad right?"

You give him a puzzled look and say "But those are the best voices. In fact they just gave me the best idea ever." With a smirk you move quickly to door and began to slam your now electrically charged hands against it. Your hands are a blur of motion as you pump huge amounts of destructive power into the door. ...and nothing happens.

"Kid how stupid do you think we are? We know that you use electricity. Did you really think that we didn't insulate your cell? See like I told you those, voices have no idea what they are talking about." he says wryly. Lightning has failed you! Unfortunately your usual back up plan for these situations is not really applicable, turn invisible and run away. "Look just settle down and don't-"

"Smash down the door!" you say to House-Of-Jerks. He manifests next to you and goes to attack the door when the vent above you starts spewing gas and the walls start to spew foam. God damn it. You curse them as you fall into unconsciousness once more.

You wake up lying in a surprisingly comfy bed. You turn your head sluggishly to look around when you hear the Kineticist ask "You ready to behave now?"

You want to scream and rave at them, but you manage to hold back the impulse, you will probably just get gassed again if you start to act out. Getting out is going to be more complicated then you thought it was going to be originally. You are not getting through that door with brute force if they knock you out every time you try to go through it. Also who the hell booby traps a jail cell, these people are paranoid, even if in this case they were correct to do so. You have to grudgingly admit that they are more competent then you originally thought they were.

"Could you I answer some questions for me?" asks the Kineticist.

"I could." you say.

" _Will_ you" he asks sounding amused.

"It's a possibility. Tell you what, I answer one of your questions, you answer one of mine?" you reply. You are not going to lie to them because lying is wrong, but you are going to vague and as unhelpful as possible. You resummon House-Of-Jerks and ask him to find and disable the traps in your cell. Nobody is going to keep this pixie caged!

"Good enough. Let's see here... how did you meet Oni Lee." he asks.

"I was walking around and noticed that he was being haunted by a baku, so I helped him out." You don't particularly care if they know this or not, so you tell them. House-Of-Jerks is unsure by what you mean by trap exactly. You explain the foam guns and gas spewer in the walls. If he can find those and similar things then disable them that would be great.

"What the hell is baku?" he asks confused.

"That not on the list!" you hear the glowy line lady hiss at him.

"Also it's my turn. Where the fuck is my dad you cock gobbling whore son." you say as House-Of-Jerks floats into the ceiling.

Kineticist bursts out laughing "Wow you got a mouth on you, don't you? He is in the medical bay. He is still unconscious from when Dragon accidentally got him with the knock out gas. I am surprised you woke up so quickly honestly since you are so tiny."

"I am not tiny! I am properly sized you stinky poopie head" you howl at him.

"Whatever you say shrimp." he chuckles. You will murder him! "Anyway your dads fine and you will be able to talk to him soon. So chill out. Hmmm. So when you kidnapped Panacea who was that woman with you?"

"Hey I didn't kidnap the Nature Bender. I just glamoured here a little and... okay maybe I did kidnap her but it was an accident okay?!" you say trying to defend yourself.

"How do you accidently kidnap someone?" he asks bemused.

"I don't know but it happens all the time. My turn now." you say.

"What! You didn't answer my question." he says annoyed.

"Yes I did. You changed your question to 'how do you accidently kidnap people' and I totes answered you. So now it's my turn now" you say smugly. You just got fae'd

"That doesn't count'!" he says.

"Uh huh."

"Nu uh."

"Uh huh."

"Nu uh."

"Uh uh."

"Nu uh."

"Uh huh."

"Nu uh."

"Oh my god!" says glowy line lady "You are a grown man! Act like it!"

"Fine. Ask your question." he grumbles

Ha! You win! What was your question again? Shit. "Um... what other booby traps are there stopping me from leaving." you ask.

He snorts "Kid I am not answering that. Try again."

"Hey! We didn't say anything about vetoes! You can't do that." you exclaim.

"Sure I can. I just did." he says.

"Fine. Why are you such a colossal dick!" you snap back.

"Well I don't know about being one but I sure ha- ooof." he grunts.

"Trust me it would take way too long to explain that." says glowy line lady.

You remember your question now! "Where is my son?" you ask "You festering toe rag." you add in after thought

"He is in a similar cell to yours." he replies "So who was that blonde woman."

"Kid I am not answering that. Try again." you say smugly.

"Hmmm. Who was it that kidnapped your dad?"

"It was you guys, duh!" you say rolling your eyes. Jeez do these guys have memory problems or something.

"I am pretty sure that wasn't us." he says with his lying lips. "So I get another question. Who did get your dad back from?"

"Some jerk off named Coin-purse. He is the leader of the rebels or something." you say.

"That made absolutely no sense. I get another question." he says.

"Nu uh"

"Uh h-"

"No." says glowly line lady "You two are not doing that again. Just let her ask a question."'

2 to 0 in your favor! "Um... let's see here..." you say trying to think a question. House-Of-Jerks floats back and informs you that it thinks that it got all the traps in your room.

If your room is trapped it stands to reason that your son's room is as well. You should get those disabled now rather than later that way they don't slow you down when it matters. You request the assistance of House-Of-Jerks and he is more than happy to comply. As he zooms away the Kineticist speaks up. "Hey are you going to ask your question or what? Because if not, it's my turn right?"

You huff in irritation and say "That's not how this works you wretched cur, if I don't ask a question then you don't get any more questions. What's the name of that asshole that got in the way of my murder-vengeance." Since you have no idea what she looks like, getting a name will help you track her down later and kick her fucking teeth in.

"You mean Dragon?" he asks. Oh Dugong well pay, once you get out of here. "Look I understand your mad at her, but she really isn't that bad unless you are watching eat then you just throw up in your mouth a little. Also she puts her hands in all sorts of weird places, tends to rub herself up against people, slurs and elongates her words randomly... well the point is despite being a weirdo she is pretty nice. You should really bury the hatchet with her, your both completely crazy, I think you two would get along."

"Oh I'll bury the hatchet alright. Hahaha Aahaha AHAHAHAHA **AHAHAHAHA**!" you say with good cheer.

"Not what I meant scary little skull girl, not what I meant. So who was it you were going to go, and I quote, 'Torture to death.'" he asks.

"I am not little you nitwitted bastard! I am going to rip your dick off and shove it into all of your various orifices!" you scream at him.

"Whoa chill out. I misspoke. I meant minuscule." he says.

You give him a nod of approval and say "That's better. Wait a second! That's even worse! You are on my shit list now. Right under Drogo and Corn." Note to self make actual shit list.

"Really Assault, really?" you hear glowy line lady say in exasperation.

"I can't help it. She is hilarious. Look at the way she is pouting. It is adorable." he says.

"I am not adorable! I am sexy and intimidating damn it!" you say. Adorable is not going to win over the Transporter. Well... unless she is into that sort of thing.

"Can you please tell us who you were going to attack earlier?" glowy line lady says cutting off whatever dickish thing the Kineticist was going to say.

You consider telling them to fuck off, before changing your mind. Cobweb is undermining their authority so they might take him out for you. It won't be as satisfying doing it yourself, but he will no doubt suffer in the PRT's torture chambers. "I was going after Clam." you inform.

There is a brief silence before the Kineticist speaks up "Yeaaaah we have no idea who that is. Could you describe him a little?"

You give a annoyed sound before saying "I told you about him earlier remember?" At their continued silence you say. "The rebel leader that kidnapped my dad."

You hear a rustling of paper before the Kineticist speaks up "You said that his name was Coin-purse."

You nod and say "That's what I just said."

"Uh you just said Clam." he pointed out.

"Why are you getting so confused by Clock's name?" you ask incredulously These guy are idiots.

You hear glowy line lady sigh and say "Can you at least describe him for us?"

You consider saying that it is now your turn, but you do want them to capture him, so you decide to let it go. You let out a grunt and say "Fine. He has an army of mercenaries with tinker stuff and I was right in front of his base. He is thinky soul-bound or something."

House-Of-Jerks shows up and informs you that your son's room as been made trap free. "Shit. You take over I got to go talk to Piggot." says the Kineticist.

"How did you find his base?" glowy line lady asks.

"It's my turn to ask a question" you say with a scowl. Jeez these people keep trying to sneak questions by you, the jerks. "Where is my stuff anyway? I would like my talky box and body armor back. They were both gifts from the Hollow Man you know."

"Were holding them right now. We'll talk about returning your things later." says the glowy line lady. In other words never. Bunch of no good gods damn thieves.

"So how did you find out about the base?" she asks.

Yeah you are not going to tell these guys about your mystery informant. Since Cauliflower has spies here he would know that he has spy in his own group and then hunt her down and kill her. However you could also play this to your advantage through trickery. Like all true fae you know how to say one thing and make people think you mean something completely different. "I just had one of Coco's minions talk to me. By the time I was done with them they were more than willing to spill all the information that I needed."

"Wait did you torture them? Taylor can't you go around torturing people for information." she says sounding strained. "Are they at least alive?"

You smirk and say "Let's just say you'll never find the body." Because there is no body, but they don't need to know that. "Anyway I don't really feel like talking about the process of disposing of dead bodies with acid." Because you really don't, they get all gooey and gross. "Or how people tend scream agony when you pump electricity into their genital till their balls explode. I mean none of those things are relevant to what we are talking about." They totally aren't. Coyote's spies should report that whoever gave up his location his now dead and hopefully throw off any suspicion placed on your informant.

"Anywho it's my turn now." you say before trailing off into silence. You sit there struggling to think of a question you want to ask and you think that they will actually answer. You finally speak up and ask "So I got to ask why in the world don't you have your cells warded against spirits or anything. That just seems sloppy to me. You can't be telling me that you don't have a couple of mages on staff who couldn't have done so. Are you guys just lazy or arrogant?"

You hear glowy line lady mutter "Of course she believes in magic." before she speaks up "Taylor we don't have any wizards because there are no such thing as real wizards, no much Myrddin wants them to."

It could have been possible that this plane did not have any magic or something, but since Gandalf the Black is clearly the most wizard to ever wizard, you know for a fact that glowy line lady is wrong. It's not like the world suddenly gain magic out of the blue yesterday or something. Well you suppose if one ripped a giant hole in reality and mana was pouring in from other dimensions, that would cause the mana levels to rise rapidly to the point that there was a magical boom. But to make a hole large enough... You start doing the calculation in your head and you are pretty sure it would take a godly amount of magical energy. Literally godly even, like a star god or something.

"...or! Are you listening!" you hear the glowy line lady yelling.

"Um sure, whatever." you say.

Then you would also have to explain the presence of beings like Raven. They don't just pop out of nowhere. Okay they sort of do, but not like all at once or anything, these things take time. You would have to repeatedly send out magically boosted signals over and over again to other planes to get the attention of beings from other universes. Which is honestly a terrible idea, you could end up inviting all sorts of beings and some of them are real jerks. But the chances that there is a hole in reality with a repetitive magical single boosts sent through it are super low, so you know that is not what is happening.

"I would appreciate if you would stop ignoring me Taylor." glowy line lady says annoyed.

"Well I would appreciate if you let me do advance magical calculations in peace but we don't always get what we want to do we." you reply equally annoyed. People can be so rude. House-Of-Jerks reenters your cell and gives you the all clear.

Time to go then. You dismiss House-Of-Jerks since he lacks the fire power to get through the door in timely manner. You then summon Burning-Ocean and quickly ask him to locate your father and son before returning to you. After a couple of minutes of ignoring the glowy line lady's various attempts to get you talking again, he returns. You ask him to lead you to your son and then your father. Your son will be able to defend himself and can aid you in the rescue of his grandpa. He nods his head and waltz over to door before materializing in front of it.

Glowy line lady lets a sigh and then a noise of surprise when you hear grinding noises in the walls, but nothing happens. Burning-Ocean then proceeds to put his first through the door as his acid causes it to melt like butter. As soon as he penetrates the door you hear a bunch of alarms going off, no doubt their guards will be coming for you soon, so you should move quickly as you leave. "What how did you-?! Taylor please stay where you are and don't do anything rash!" you hear the glowy line lady yell. Yeah that fat chance of that happening dookie face.

Burning-Ocean quickly makes a hole big enough for you to squeeze through easily and then pops back into astral space. You quickly fly after him eager to be reunited with your son. He leads you down a few cells before smashes through one of the doors revealing Mt. Flufflekins sitting there, waiting for you. "Time to go snooky-wookums." you say to your son and he lets a cheep of joy as he soars over to you. Now it's time to get your father and then leave this gods forsaken hellhole.

Since you can all fly Burning-Ocean asks if you want to take the most direct route possible. You consider it for a second before agreeing to his suggestion, burrowing through the ceiling would catch the PRT off guard, probably avoid any road blocks or traps, and speed up your travel time a great deal. Plus the PRT will have giant holes throughout their building that they will have to spend time and energy fixing. Frankly you can't think of a downside. Burning-Ocean hurls globs of acid at the ceiling in quick succession for about a minute creating a hole, which allows all of you to move up a floor.

You fly up into a hallway much like the one below you. You see a man standing with his mouth wide open in surprise and fear, right in front of you. You quickly kick him in the nuts and shove him down the hole before he has anytime to respond. While Burning-Ocean takes another minute creating another opening for the three of you, you and Mt. Flufflekins keep watch for any PRT goons.

The three of you quickly ascend another floor and take stock of your new location. You appear to be in a kitchen of some sort. Inside of is a woman eating a tub of ice cream mixed with Tabasco sauce and pickles. Behind her is a draconic looking spirit with arcs of electricity jumping between its spines. The Construct chokes out a surprised "Taylor?!" Wait you know that voice. That's the punk ass bitch that brought you here in the first place!

You give her a withering glare and stalk towards ready to smack a bitch. "Taylor I need you to calm down." she says trying to sound calm but you can hear the fear in her voice. Not so tough without her mecha-dragon now is she! "You need to think about this rationally. We know that you are going to head for your father, so they have already sent people to intersect when you go to get him."

Huh. She raises a excellent point. You give her a nod and say "Your right I don't know if I can fight through all those people and get my father out safely." She looks relived until what you say next "That's why I need a hostage of course!"

"Taylor that's not going to make things better! That's going to make things worse!" she says panic entering her voice.

"Agree to disagree. Kidnapping time!" you say. Now how to carry her around, since you don't trust her to be conscious in your general area? You can't do it due to your noodle arms and while Mt. Flufflekins is certainly strong enough, it would be to awkward moving her around due to his small stature. Burning-Ocean is made of acid so that isn't going to work either. Hmmm. Oh! You can just glamourer her and she'll follow you around obediently. It went last time you did it... well kinda sorta. It did work last time and that's what matters. Your sure you won't regret doing it this time, that's for sure.

"Tay-" she begins when you hit her with your glamour and her eyes glaze over.

"You'll help get my dad out of here right?" you ask.

"Of course! All I have ever wanted to do was to help you Taylor." she says breathlessly. She looks at you with a hungry look in her eyes that you feel does not bode well.

"Right. Stay close so I can use you as human shield." you say. They will be less willing to open fire since you can throw her in the way of their attacks. Well unless they are total douche bags... Okay when they shoot at you she will at least be able to shield you from the brunt of their attacks. She scrambles over to you and presses her body against yours. Um, that's a little closer then you meant, but whatever.

Before you leave you got grab the tub of ice cream, it looks delicious and you can eat it later. While the Construct may be a terrible person her taste in fine cuisine is impeccable. You follow Burning-Ocean as he smashes through several wall that are in your way. You see glowy line lady, the Kineticist and about ten PRT goons are there waiting for you. You pull the Construct close to you and say "Everyone fuck off or I kill this bitch."

Glowy line lady opens her mouth to say something when you cut her off "I am not joking around here you either let me get my dad and leave or I am going to slaughter my way out of here starting with- Oooooooh" You let a moan of surprise and pleasure as the Construct starts to suck on your neck. Seriously!? Time and place Construct. Time and place! You give an awkward cough and continue "Starting with her!" The Construct respond by snuggling closer. Stupid glamour.

The rest of them however move out your way giving you access to the med bay. "Is that room booby trapped?" you ask the Construct. She shakes her head and nuzzles against your face. You let out a sigh exasperation and drag her with you into the med bay. You spot your father lying unconscious on one of the beds. You point to the wall with a window and tell Burning-Ocean to tear it down which he proceeds to do happily.

You dismiss Burning-Ocean and summon your old pal Moves-Like-Wind. "Hey Construct, go get piggyback ride on Moves-Like-Wind." you say pointing at Moves-Like-Wind. She gives you a disappointed look but she does unravel herself from your body and move over to your spirit friend. "Can you grab my dad and give us a speed boost?" you ask Moves-Like-Wind once the Construct is done mounting him. He flits over to your dad and picks him up, you then feel the power of wind surge trough your body. You then leap out the open in the wall and the five of you zoom through the air away from this den of teetotalers.

As you are flying through the air you try to decide on whether to bring the Construct back to your head quarters or not. You are not really sure how long you want to kidnap her for to be honest. You suppose you could pump her for info on the PRT and then punish her afterwards for her various crimes against you and the city. Although it feels weird attacking somebody who is tripping heads over heels for you to be honest. It's kind of like kicking a puppy. Sure the puppy is a jackass but it is still a puppy.

Well you suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask her some quick questions before you make any decisions. You ask Moves-Wind-Land to land on a nearby roof. When you have all got the ground under your feet you turn to the Construct and say "So what do you think the PRT is going to do in response to me escaping and kidnapping you?"

She gives you a coy smile and says "Welllll, since you 'kidnapped' me they will no doubt try and recover me soon as possible. I am one of the most powerful tinkers in the Protectorate and my work towards countering endbringers is invaluable. They would be pretty desperate to get me back and would probably willing to assault your base. I am also pretty certain that they would call in Protectorate members from other cities if they felt like they couldn't handle it by themselves. Although if we tell them that you're not really kidnapping me and that were just in love, I am sure that they will leave us be."

Yeah your pretty sure that is not going to work. Like at all. Since you know, what with the actual kidnapping that is going on right now. Now that you think about it you sure have been kidnapping a lot of people lately. First it was the Transporter, then the Nature Bender, and now the Construct. You think that you may have a kidnapping addiction or something? "If I uh sent you back right now, do you think that they will attack my base?"

Great now she has a heart broken expression on her face "A-are you breaking up with m-me?" she says with a wobbly voice. It looks like she is about to burst into tear at any moment. Oh gods damn it. You hate it when people start crying. It makes you feel like you shit lord. Which isn't fair because you haven't done anything wrong.

"Would I do that?" you say giving her your best smile. Responding to question with a question is always a good way getting out of saying awkward truths. She looks unsure for a moment before shaking her head. "So there is no reason the cry is there? So if you went back would they send dudes over to me base?"

She gives you a searching look before saying "They would put me in master/stranger protocols and I don't think they would attack you right away, but I can't say for certain." You don't know what master/stranger protocols are, but they don't sound like they would be your problem.

You spend a minute thinking over what to do with her before you finally come to a decision. You never got around to killing Cox and it was totally the Constructs fault that you never got to do that, so if anything she owes you one and should help you rectify this oversight. Yep that makes total sense. "Right. So here was what we are going to do, we're going back to Coat's base and killing him." you say.

The Construct looks unsure and says "Taylor you know if keep committing acts like this and the PRT will no longer be able to help you, right?"

You have no idea what she just said means, but you fail to see why you would ever want the PRT's help in anything. "Don't worry about it." you say dismissively before you start flying to your destination. After a few minutes the five of you touchdown a block or so away from his base. You turn to the Construct and say "Can you get dragon construct thing to come here?"

She nods her head and says "Yes. I have a few suits scattered across the city in case a rapid response is needed. What is it you exactly wanted me to do?"

"Can you send in one your dragons in first?" you ask "That way none of us are in danger."

She beams at you and says "That's a great idea Taylor. You are so smart and kind and pretty and-"

"Yeah that's great, can you send the dragon suit now?" you say interrupting her. Honestly this whole glamour thing is making you increasingly uncomfortable. The Construct is bringing up memories of the Nature Bender which is putting you in a bad mood. You reassure yourself that they are nothing alike. At least this time you know for sure that you are mind controlling somebody who is unredeemable evil and has no good qualities. I mean that are the chances you would mistake two good guys and bad guys in a row?

The Construct lies down on the ground and passes out for some reason. So lazy. You wait a couple of minutes for her to wake up when you see a mecha-dragon fly over to Coco's lair. You watch as it enters into the complex and then after a minute the whole base explodes outward, debris flying every direction. The Construct opens her eyes and yells "Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow."

"Uh did you do that?" you ask confused. If she did, then she is much more efficient then you thought she would be.

She groans "No. I think he rigged his base to explode. Ow."

"Huh. I guess he knew that I was coming or something." you say. It is probably too much to hope for that he was too dumb to leave his base before he rigged it to explode, so he is probably hiding away somewhere else now. You stand trying to think of a way to track him down for a minutes when you hear movement behind you.

"Necros there you are!? I have been searching this whole area for the past hour or so looking for you! Why haven't you been answering your phone!" says a extremely irate Hollow Man.

"It's not my fault! She kidnapped me!" you say pointing at the Construct.

The Hollow Man turns his gaze to her and asks "Who is she?"

"She is the Construct." you say.

"I am Dragon." she says as the same time as you.

The Hollow Man pauses for a moment and says "The tinker?" When she nods, he turns back to you and says "The PRT captured you?"

"Yeah they were total jerks and stuff! But I broke out and kidnapped the Construct right back, that will show them!" you say.

The Hollow Man buries his masked face in his hands and groans before mumbling to himself "I am never taking my eyes off her again." You nod in agreement. You should never take your eyes off the Construct, she is sneaky. "Let's go back to the base before anything else happens. What are we doing with her?"

You look over at the Construct and shrug before saying "I am pretty much done with her, so let her go I guess?"

"That's probably for the best." the Hollow Man said sounding relieved.

"You are breaking up with me!" wails the Construct as she gets to her feet.

"Well the thing is... I kind of hate you." you say. At the total devastated expression on her face you feel a small twinge of something that may possible be similar to sensation that some say is guilt. You pat her on the back and give a try at comforting her "There. There. It's not me it's you." She fails to be comforted by your assurances that it is total all her fault you don't love her and never will. Okay maybe you could have tried harder than that, but in your defense you don't like her very much.

However since it looks like she is close to tears and your tummy starts to hurt a little when you look at her distraught face, you decide that maybe breaking the glamour on her will make her and you feel better about all this. So you reach out and twist and pull on the veil of fae magic surrounding her, breaking her free.

She stands there blinking confusedly before saying "Did all that just happen?"

"Probably?" you say unsure. You can't be sure what she is talking about, but you think she means the stuff that happened in the last twenty minutes or so. "Anyway, You feeling like yourself again? No longer in love with me and stuff right?"

She glares at you and says "No Taylor I don't love you. In fact right now I am not particularly happy with you at all, since you just tried to us me to assassinate someone."

"Good. Good. That means I can finally do this without feeling bad." you say before promptly kicking her right in the snatch. The Construct lets out a squeal of pain and falls over onto the ground. "That's for scaring my son."

The Hollow Man lets out a sigh "Really Necros? Was that necessary? "

You give him a firm nod and say "Totes."

"...let's just go back to the base, before you get yourself killed." he says in resigned tone.

Hey you resent that, it's not like you get into that much trouble when you go out. You didn't even kill anybody or anything today. Mind you not for lack of trying, but the point still stands! As you all leave you hear the Construct say "She took my ice cream! That bitch!"

After ten minutes or so you make it back to your base and head inside. You head to your room and have Moves-Like-Wind set your dad down on your bed. You sit down next to the bed and stare at your father's sleeping form. Both the Hollow Man and your son sit down next to you but neither say anything. Your dad looks thinner then you remember him being last time you saw him, your guessing Cobol hadn't been feeding him very well. Another reason to find and murder him on a later date. After a few minutes of watching him doze you start to get antsy from sitting around and doing nothing.

You need to go do something before you explode and do something crazy. You look over to the Hollow Man, he still looks frazzled from earlier and would probably appreciate an apology or something. Although maybe he forgot you broke your promise and reminding him would just make him mad at you again. So instead you ask "How was your day?"

He gives you a flat look and says "Stressful."

Oh no! It sounds like he does remember and he is mad. Maybe if you if give him some advice on stress relief you can distract him from your misdeeds. "You should do some breathing exercises or drink some alcohol, both of those are good for the soul." you say nervously.

"While I am not opposed to drinking, apparently all shipments of alcohol coming into the city are getting waylaid by thieves or something." he says. Hmmm. That's a pretty good idea actually. Maybe you should try and figure out where a shipment is coming in and get some booze yourself. "But you know what would also help my stress levels, if you stopped running off as soon as an idea pops into your head."

You shift around guiltily and say "I didn't mean to! I was just super worried about my dad. He wasn't answering his talky box and I couldn't sit around waiting for him. Also by the way the PRT stole my talky box and body armor, the blackguards!"

"The burner phone won't really be much of a problem to replace and I got several pairs of body armor your size since I had feeling that you lose the one I got you." he responds. "I can understand your worry about your father, but if you had just spoken to me, I could have come with you and we probably could have avoided your capture by the PRT entirely."

You guess he is right. The Hollow Man is pretty smart and probably have seen through the Construct's treachery. You regret giving the Construct a second chance, but you are not going to mistake again, she is out of chances with you. To be honest the only reason you didn't kill her earlier was that she didn't kill you when she had the chance. If she continues to use non-lethal force against you, you suppose that you can return the courtesy.

You say "I am sorry Hollow Man. Ice cream?" You extend the tub of ice cream that you acquired from the Construct as a peace offering.

He looks into the tub and makes a face "While I appreciate the gesture I am afraid I will have to pass." His loss. You start scooping the slightly melted contents with your hands and shoveling it into your mouth. Mt. Flufflekins makes a hungry noise so you lean over and regurgitate the food from your stomach into his mouth. He makes a happy guzzling noise and you can't help but rub the top of his head due to how cute he is. The Hollow Man looks like he is going to throw up for some reason. Weird. "Uhg. Do you think you could run through today's events for me? So I have clearer picture of what happened." he asks.

You give him a vigorous nod and launch into the epic tale that was your day. You start with the meeting of Gandalf the Black and acquiring them as your apprentice. You are explaining about when the your apprentice brought up family you remembered that you had some of you own when the Hollow Man speaks up. "So do you remember your original name then?" he asks.

"Yep! I am Taylor Hebert extraordinaire! I don't know why I couldn't quite remember it until now, but suddenly it seems so obvious now, you know?" you say.

He gives you nod and says "I can relate in some ways I suppose. Before you fixed me, I had trouble remembering things that now are clear as day. I am glad that you are more yourself Taylor, losing oneself is a terrible thing."

You give a him beaming smile and say "Thanks!" He can be so sweet. You then continue your tale about your discovery that your dad was missing and the mysterious phone call that you got from that helpful stranger. The Hollow Man grills you on everything that you can remember about the talky box call, but he too has no idea who called you. When you get to part of your escape of the PRT building he interrupts you once more.

"You didn't kill anybody correct?" he says with urgency in his voice. When you shake your head he lets out a sigh relief "Good. I strongly advise you to continue not killing anybody that works for the PRT. If you do then they will respond quite harshly and I don't know if I could keep you safe."

You would argue that you could handle them, but they did just knock you repeatedly and could have totally killed you at any point. If they are not trying to kill you then it is only fair that you don't kill them. Huh. You guess that their assassin's really were trying to tranquilize you earlier. "Also please do not kidnap any of their members that will only end badly."

You once again hold your tongue when you feel like protesting and nod instead. You would argue that they kidnapped you and your family, so it was only fair that you do the same, but you did break your promise the Hollow Man earlier so you are willing to do what he says for now. You then wrap up your story and ask "Do you think you could help me find Cove?"

"I don't know." says the Hollow Man. "Tracking him down will be difficult since we don't have any leads. I would suggest checking out his old base for indication to where he would have moved, but since he rigged it to explode that is a dead end."

"Yeah I am not sure how to find him either." you say. If you knew what his aura looked like you could probably figure out where he was hiding with the help of your spirit friends. It would have probably taken a couple of weeks to comb the city, but you would have nailed that son of a bitch. You would call back the informant and ask if she knew anything but you have no idea what her number is. With a sigh a frustration you do a once over on your dad to see when he will wake up. It looks like it will still be about half an hour.

You sit there in silence for about a minute trying to decide what to do before you choosing to visit the Transporter. It's been about a week since you have seen her and you should probably stop putting it off. You would have done it sooner but every time you think about doing it you get kind of cold and shaky. Like right now your right hand is jiggling around a little. You're not really sure why you get like this but you don't like it. Well no strange confusing feelings are going to stop you from living your life!

When you stand up and march toward the Transporter's lab, the Hollow Man stands up and starts to follow after you. "Um do you need to talk about something?" you ask curious.

"No." he replies.

"Um okay?" you say confused as you continue you the Transporter's room. "Then why are following me?"

"Because every time I take my eye of you, you wander off without telling me. Frankly that it took me this long to figure this out is embarrassing." he says.

You glare at the Hollow Man and puff out your cheeks. "I am just going to go talk to the Transporter about some private stuff. I am not going to leave the building or anything." you say annoyed.

"So you say. But since you have broken my trust repeatedly, how can I know that you really mean what you say?" he asks.

You can't help but flinch a little at that. It hurts to know that Hollow Man doesn't trust what you say any more. You're not sure how to fix this. Ugh friendship is hard. "I uh that's fair." you say uncomfortably "But could I get ten minutes alone with the Transporter. Pleaseeeee." You give him the biggest puppy dog eyes you possibly can and hope it works.

He stares at you blankly before sighing "Fine." You give a squeal of delight and give him a hug before rushing off to meet the Transporter. You are so giddy that he said yes you don't even remember why you were so nervous to go meet her before you already through the door and it is to late back down. You see her hunched over at her desk work on some sort of spear, maybe? You see several spears leaning against the wall. She does not seem to notice your presence as you walk up to her.

You sit down on a nearby stool and watch her work as you try to speak up. As you examine her face, you can't help but frown when it becomes apparent that she has not been taking care of herself. Her eyes are blood shot from lack of sleep and it looks and smells like she hasn't showered for days. You lean over and bop her on the nose "Bad."

She starts and starts to flail around as she falls backwards of her stool "Motherfucker! Which when of you shitheads-"

You bop her on the nose again for swearing "Bad."

She glowers at you as she clambers back onto her stool "What the f... what was that for." she asks annoyed.

"When was the last time you ate?" you ask.

"It was... um what day is it." she asks.

"I have no idea." you say. Your actual not sure what calendar they use around here, but whatever they use you are sure it will be completely ridiculous. "Anyway I do better job keeping track my health then you and I am me."

She looks faintly embarrassed and she should be, since you regularly lose things like your pants. Her stomach rumbles and she lets out a sigh and goes over to her cold box and pulls out food. She hands you some food and starts eating some of her own. As you are eating you discreetly cast a cleaning spell on her because she reeks. "So how's your project going." you ask avoiding the question you really want to ask.

"Almost done I just need to make ten of these and this is the last one." she gestures at the spear on her desk.

"Uh..." you say and point at the twelve spears leaning against the wall.

She looks over where you are pointing and swears "Son of a bitch! So I guess I am done then..." she trails off embarrassed.

You poke one of the spears and ask "So what do these things do anyway?"

She gives you a smirk and says "Here let me show you." She walks over to the spears and grabs one and places the tip on the ground before flipping a switch on the handle. The tip starts to whir and grind into the concrete. It then shoots into the ground leaving a large hole. She then repeats this process with the rest of the spears, before walking over to a large box in the center of the workshop and pushing some buttons.

The whole room starts to shake and you hear a large grinding sound. You are about to ask what is going on when the whole room jerks upwards and knocks you off your feet. The Transporter is looking at a window and cackling "All those fuckers looked down on me! Now I am looking down on you from flying invisible fortress of doom!" You clamber to your feet and move over to the window. Yep you're definitely flying.

As you watch the ground shrink away a question occurs to you. "Um how are we suppose to come and go?"

"Huh?" asks the Transporter.

"Welllll, we got what a couple of hundred of people coming and going during the day right. How are they suppose to leave when we are up in the sky." you ask. She stares at you for a moment before she starts cussing up a storm. You love the Transporter and all, but she is kind of an idiot. She starts slamming her head against the nearby wall so walk over and pat her on the back. "There. There. We all forgot things like the fact we need the ground to walk."

The Hollow Man burst through the door and says accusingly "What did you do?!"

"It was her!" you say throwing the Transporter under the bus.

* * *

Thomas sat in his house fuming. Today had been a catastrophe, five years of work gone down the drain all because of that maniac. Staying in Brockton Bay was unfeasible now with his power no longer functioning properly if it interacted with that girl, that same lunatic gunning for him, and the PRT suddenly paying far too much attention to him. He would have to move elsewhere and retire 'Coil' and start up a new identity in a different city.

He was still couldn't believe how fast she tracked him and her father down. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes after the phone call and she didn't even know who he was before he had even called her. When Dragon showed up on the security cameras right in front of his base he nearly had a heart attack. He had to abandon his base after that, with both Hebert and the PRT knowing its location keeping it was pointless.

He would have to wait a couple of months before he could restart his efforts so nobody would connect whatever identity he had with Coil. He of course needed to tie up some loose ends first before he started any new plans. While he was fairly sure that Tattletale didn't know anything actually important there was no reason to take the chance and be wrong.

 _He reached for his phone when he heard a knock at his door. Ignoring it he called Holtz on one of his burners. "Holtz I need you to take care of Tattletale." he said. He blinked in confusion when all he heard was a buzzing sound coming from his phone. He heard the knock on the door again louder this time._

 _Frowning he hung up his phone and dialed the number again. After the ringing stopped his phone started to emit the buzzing noise again .'Must be broken' he thought. He stood up and went to a nearby desk. He then opened a draw and pulled out a spare burner phone. Once again when he was done dialing the number all he got was a buzzing noise._

 _Growling he threw the phone across the room. Was there some kind of interference causing the phones not to work? He was considering ending the timeline when a something stabbed him in the side. As he landed on the ground face first. He tried to move so he could see his attacker but his body was paralyzed. The room was now filled with the sound of buzzing-_

He heard a knock on his door. God damn it Hebert must be near Tattletale causing his timeline to go haywire again. Last time he had been attacked by a group a horny rhinos. The less said about that incident the better. He stood up and went to go answer the door. He needed to vent some stress and whoever was at the door would be nice plaything.

He opened the door and saw a red headed girl about the age of fifteen or sixteen. He recalled seeing her around the neighborhood once and while over the years, but never bothered to get her name. He gave her a friendly smile and asked "Can I help you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you Mr. Calvert, but my mom ran out of eggs and I sent me out to go ask the neighbors if they have any." she said giving him a friendly smile.

 _"Hmmm. I do believe that I have some. Why don't you come in?" he said. He was going to look forward breaking her. She looked faintly similar to Hebert and while he could not lay his hands on the real thing this girl would do._

 _"Thanks!" she said and walked through his door._

 _"The kitchen is this way." he said._

 _Once they were in the kitchen Calvert pulled out his pistol and pointed it at her. "Sit in that chair and don't even think about screaming." She stared at him in surprise for a moment before sitting down."Didn't your parents ever teach you to be careful around strangers." he said with sadistic glee in his voice._

 _"W-what Mr. Calvert-"_

 _"Shut up and strip." Thomas said._

 _The look of shock and surprise left her face as she suddenly smirked at him."You should look_ _ **bee**_ _hind you Mr. Calvert." she said with predatory gleam in her eye._

 _"I said-" he began but was interrupted when a stinger stab all the way though the back of his chest into the front. He dropped the gun in surprise and felt his body lock up as he fell to the ground-_

What it the world?! He stared at the girl in front of him suspiciously. 'Was that Hebert in disguise or was she just nearby causing my timelines to fall apart?' he thought. Should he shoot her right now? No. They were out in the open and if it wasn't Hebert there were far too many potential witnesses. Also even if it was Hebert he didn't want to explain why Hebert would be at his doorstep. "No." he said curtly and went to close the door.

The girl stuck her foot in front of the door and slammed a fist into his stomach sending him flying down the hallway. "That's too bad~ I guess I will have to take your soul instead." she said with laughter in her voice.

 _Thomas pulled out his gun and let out a scream as stinger went through his arm-_

Thomas gasped for air and said "What do you want girl?"

"Didn't I just say?" she said as she sauntered towards him "You should bee paying better attention you know?"

"Don't be ridiculous there is no such thing as souls." he croaked out. "I can pay you if don't kill me."

"Oh?" she said before letting out a insane giggle "I think I will take both. When you are part of my hive you will give me what I want anyway."

 _He was not going to be turned into someone's puppet. Thomas went for his gun again this time to end his life before she could do whatever it was that she was planning to him when a bee the size of a dog stabbed him right through the hand-_

He didn't see her creature and hoping to catch her off guard, Thomas went for his gun again, only for the bee to appear out of nowhere and sting him once more. "Uh uh. Now bee a good boy and beehive" she said. He wanted to scream and curse at her, but his body was no longer responding. "Don't worry Mr. Calvert we are going to have so much fun~"

* * *

"What do you mean it never occurred to you that you would need to add landing features into your design? I thought you were brain dead from drug use, but since that has been fixed clearly you are natural a incompetent fool." growled the Hollow Man at the Transporter. Wow. You don't think you have ever seen the Hollow Man show so this much emotion before, he must be really mad.

The Transporter face turn red and she snarls "Hey fuck you! Do you know how hard it is to keep something this fucking big in the air! So maybe I forgot some little details, I just accomplished a god damn miracle of science!"

"I agree. It is a miracle you haven't killed us all yet." replies the Hollow Man

"Fuck off you god damn zombie prick! All your good at is killing yourself over and over again!" she screeches.

The Hollow Man's face turns murderous and he hisses "And you are such a terrible tinker that you make Leet look competent."

"Oh you motherfucker, it's on!" she howls at him.

You watch as your two friends verbally tear into each other. Both their faces are getting redder and redder, and inching closer together as their voices rise. Wait. "Are you guys flirting?!" you say feeling betrayed. The Hollow Man is trying to steal your woman!

Both of them stop speaking and stare at you with identical flabbergasted expressions. "What! No!" says the Transporter horrified. The Hollow Man is too busy choking, no doubt do to guilt, to respond.

"Unacceptable!" you angrily "I called dibs Hollow Man!" The Transporter, with her face beet red, opens her mouth but no words come out.

The Hollow Man regains his composure and says "Taylor I am not flirting with her. Frankly I could do much better and so could you."

"What did you just say you bastard!?" exclaims the Transporter.

As they start arguing you decide that you should step in and end this argument before the sexual tension becomes too much and they start making out. "Guys we all make mistakes, I mean who here among us hasn't accidentally destroyed a universe or two?" They once again both stop arguing and stare at you. "Look the important thing is, when you tear a hole in reality and the unspeakable horrors start pouring in through the cracks devouring everything in their path, is that you step up and fix your mistakes. Not yelling at me for killing us all. You get what I am saying?"

There is a moment of silence before the Hollow Man speaks "I actually do understand what you are trying to say and you are right."

The Transporter still blushing nods and says "Yeah. I guess I should start working on some kind of shuttle."

"No. You are going to get some sleep." you say "Clearly lack of sleep is effecting your judgment."

"But-" she starts.

"Sleep." you command and raise your boping hand in case she continues to protest.

She eyes your hand warily before grumbling and moving over to a mattress in the corner of her room. As she is lying down you and the Hollow Man leave.

Your dad should be waking up soon so you should head over before he wakes up. Your sure that he will be confused when he wakes up and you will need to clear things up for him. When you walk into the main area your followers start bombarding you with questions, mostly to do with things like 'how are they going to leave or get food'. "The thing is the Transporter kind of jumped the gun and stuff so I didn't really plan on this or anything." you say. What are you going to do about food? You know that there is some food up here but you don't think there is enough for everybody to get something to eat. "If you guys figure out how many people are stuck up here, the Hollow Man and I could go on a food run or something tonight."

There is some grumbling and muttering from the crowd but they do what you say and talk amongst themselves. Ugh this is such a headache. You will have to come up with something better later, but for now that will have to do. It is a good thing the Hollow Man was raiding old ABB store houses for loot so you should have enough money to feed everyone for now.

As you move back to you room to see if your dad woke up yet, you look over at the Hollow Man and the image of him and the Transporter going at it pops into your head. You feel... aroused? Huh. You weren't expecting that. Maybe something like sadness, rage, or jealousy, those make sense, but arousal? You don't know why, but the thought of their hot sweaty bodies pressed up against each other, really does it for you.

You bite your lip as you try to dissect what about this makes you hot. Let's see here... naked Transporter is definitely something that you dig. Her soft curves and bountiful chest are still super sexy and you want to tap that ass. You still think that since she saw you naked you should get to see her naked. Next you think about the Hollow Man and... when did the Hollow Man get sexy!? That is definitely new and confusing. You never really considered men attractive before but suddenly you remember how hard and firm his arms are when he hugs you. Honestly this is weirding you out.

Are you gay? Wait that makes no sense, you still want to make out with the Transporter. So you're... straight-gay? Straugay? Gauight? Is there even a word for this?! You are so conf- ooof. You bounce backwards off of the wall in front of you and land on your butt. "Taylor are you alright?" asks the Hollow Man concerned. He reaches over to help pick up.

"F-fine" you stutter with a blush. Why are you blushing!? What is going on with you!? Damn these gay thoughts! You stare at his hand dumbly for a moment before grabbing it. "I-i need a moment alone with m-my dad." God damn it Necros stop stuttering! You refuse to look the Hollow Man in the eye and rush into your room. You slam the door behind you and plop down next to your dad. Well that is a thing that happened.

As you sit on the ground trying to collect your thoughts when your dad suddenly stirs and lets out a groan. He is waking up! You start bouncing a little in excitement and lean over your dad's face waiting for him to open his eyes with baited breath. He opens his eyes and lets out a girly scream of surprise. "Where am I?! Who are you!?"

Ouch. You are a little hurt that your dad does not recognize you, actual you are very hurt. It's been what? Two weeks and he already forgot what you look like."It's me, Dad!" you say trying to keep the pain out of your voice.

He stares at you in bewilderment before blurting out "Taylor?! What happened to you?!"

Now it is your turn to stare at him bewilderment "Huh? What do you mean?"

"Your face! Your hair! Your eyes! They have all changed and you have butterfly wings! You look nothing like you used to! How long were those people holding me!" he said somewhat hysterically.

"I don't know?" you say unsure.

Your dad sits there looking lost for a moment before he grabs you and pulls you into a hug "I missed you kiddo."

"I missed you too dad." you mumble into his shoulder.

After a minute of sitting you dad's embrace he speaks up "What... what have you been doing since I was kidnapped? Where have you been staying?"

You try to think back to what you have been doing for the last two plus weeks and have trouble recalling all of it. You have just been so busy and so many things have happened that it is hard to remember what and when things happened. You should probably go over the most important thing happened at least. Hmmm. "Well I have some good news! You are a grandpa now!"

Your dad stares at you opened mouth and bug eyed no doubt from joy when he sputters "What?! I can't have been held that long! It can't have been over a month!"

You stare at him confusion before asking "Why would that matter?"

He does not seem to be hearing what you are saying as he keeps talking "Who's the father?! Who's the bastard that knocked up my little girl?!"

You give him a bemused shrug and say "I don't remember." Why is your dad getting so upset? You thought this was good news?

"Somebody raped you!" he screams in horror.

"What? No. At least I don't think so?" you say unsure. Well you guess you can understand why your dad would be upset if he thought somebody forced themselves on you. But your pretty sure that didn't happen, you are not sure why, but you just know it. Your dad just stares at you in horrified silence causing you to fidget "So uh do you want to meet your grandson?" He gives you a jerky nod.

It's only then you release that your son has not been following all this time. When was the last time you saw him again? You open your door and call out "Mt. Flufflekins! Where are you?!"

You hear him callback "Here Momma!" As he flies out of the kitchen towards you, oh he must have been getting snack. He lands into your outstretched arms and you snuggle him close. You should probably scold him for going off by himself, but it was also your fault for not watching him more closely. You back to your dad and present you son "Say hi to Grandpa Mt. Flufflekins!"

"Hi Grandpa!" he cheeps.

Your father stares at your son with a lost look on his face like he has no idea what is going on anymore. "Aren't you going to say hi, Grandpa?" you say nudging your dad.

He starts and says "Hi." and then starts staring you with a weird intensity. You cock your head and stare back at him. Are you having a staring contest? After a few minutes he looks a way so you guess you won that game. "Taylor where are we?" he asks his voice strange.

"You are in my secret invisible flying base, I got it when I took over the local merchants guild " you say.

"Merchants guild?" he mutters confused. "Do you mean the Merchants?" he asks with dread in voice.

"Yep. The last leader was jerk so I snuck into his house and killed him, so I became the leader." Becoming the leader of any organization is pretty simple really, you just kill whoever is in charge and then anybody you argues that you are not the boss afterwards."He was doing a really bad job of it to. Can you believe that most of them were homeless and had drug problems? Talk about being a shitty leader. I am working on fixing the drug problem right now, in another week or so they should be cured." you explain.

"I see." he says with that same strange tone before trailing off into silence. He must still be tired from all the drug still in his system. He suddenly speaks up "Taylor... I..." before he falls back into silence. His eyes roam the room as if looking for something to talk about. "You haven't been taking any drugs have you?"

You blink in surprise before shaking your head "No. Why do you ask?"

He gives you a searching look before saying "No reason." and pulling you back into a hug. Mmm hugs are nice. You are so glad that your family is back together again. You are not going to let anything tear you apart.

After a few more moments your dad lets out a sigh and says "Okay, I think I am ready to hear more about your last few weeks."

Why would he need to prepare himself to hear about your recent adventures? You rerun what you told him about yourself and you can't find anything objectionable about what you just said. Hmm. Maybe he misunderstood what you said or something, people tend to do that a lot. Well your dad was drugged repeatedly so you guess it's fair that he has trouble following what you are saying.

You decide to avoid anything that could possibly upset him and after a few seconds of hard thought speak "Well I made some super cool friends recently. Their great people! I mean sure all of them are wanted for various crimes by the city, but the people in charge of this city are clearly insane, so I am sure what ever crimes they are wanted for are nonsense anyway."

Your dad just gives a tired nod and says "Of course they are." What does he mean by that?

"My first and best friend is the Hollow Man." you continue. "I met him on the day I woke up in my coffin."

"Wait coffin?" your dad says confused.

"Oh didn't I tell you? I can't remember for sure what happened but I think Emma killed and buried me. I then woke up few hours later as a zombie." you say.

Your dad starts to making those choking noises again "Wait you died and Emma... why would she do that?!"

You shrug you shoulders and say "No clue. Some peeps are crazy motherfuckers I guess. Fuck, sorry Dad I keep forgetting to watch my language."

"But..." begins your dad before he stops and collects himself "When did the two of you stop being friends?"

"Um it's been... two years I think?" you say unsure. Honestly you haven't really thought about that ginger bitch in awhile. Compared to people like the Despoiler, the Wyrm and the PRT she is barely worth even thinking about. Sure thinking about her kind of pisses you off and you would kick her teeth in if you ever saw her, but you don't care enough to track her down or anything.

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" he asks confused.

Why didn't you ever say anything, now that you think about it? You have trouble following your old train of thought, but from what you kind you remember your reasons were incredibly stupid. Thankfully in your undeath you have much more commonsense. "Mortal me was kind of a moron. I can't even make sense of what she was thinking back then. Anyway enough about unimportant things like my murderer, I think I was talking about the Hollow Man."

With a distressed look your dad says "Taylor you dying isn't unimportant, I don't want you saying things like that."

You give him a confused look. Why would your death be important it hasn't stop you from living your life or anything. Your dad can be so weird at times. "Um okay?"

You stare at each other in silence before you break it "So the Hollow Man is pretty great. He like knows everything about everything and gives great advice about hunting down your enemies. He really helped me out with hunting down the Despoiler. He broke up with his old friend the Wyrm so he could keep being my friend, when the Wyrm threw a hissy fit, so I know he cares a lot about me. Stupid Wyrm, that guy was a huge jerk and tried to kill me just because the Hollow Man liked me as a friend better. But I defeated that asshole with the power of friendship and drowning him to death."

"Well it good you have someone looking out for you." your dad says with that weird tone again. You give him a happy nod, before you remember your last couple of conversations with the Hollow Man.

"Although we are kind of been fighting a little right now. I mean you burn down a few building and kidnap a few people and suddenly he is all like 'Stop wondering off Taylor. Did you blow that up Taylor?' Sure I did blow those things up but he just kind of assumes it always me now you know? And I kind of broke a couple of promises to him and now he doesn't trust me anymore. What do you when you're fighting with your friends?" you ask.

Your dad does not answer you right away, but he eventually says unsure "Well it sounds like you hurt him by breaking your promises to him, the only thing I could I really suggest is make sure to show him that you can be trusted again and say that you're sorry." He then adds "Also stop burning down buildings and kidnapping people, actually as your father I am telling to stop doing those things."

"But how I am going to stop evil if I can't burn things down?!" you protest.

Your dad gives you level stare "Taylor."

"Fine." you sulk."I'll give it a try. I really don't want him to stop being friends with me, so maybe that make will make him happy, he gives nice firm strong hugs with his muscular arms that make you feel safe." Mmmmm Hollow Man hugs.

Your dad is scowling for some reason "Does he now? I would like to speak to this Hollow Man."

"Sure! I'll introduce you to him later." you say. "Oh I need your advice on my other friend the Transporter."

"I'll see what I could do." he says neutrally.

"Well she is a drop dead bombshell with a ass that just won't quit and I am really into her, but here is that thing it turns out she is gay and not interested. She said she would think about it, but I think she just said to spare my feelings. So I need to turn her around with the power of seduction, but I am unsure what approach I should take you know? You seduced Mom right? So you know a thing or two about gay woman." you gush.

"I... I don't even know how to respond to that." your dad says.

"I know right! So complicated." you say nodding in understanding. "Maybe I should offer to give her a massage and use my techniques to get her going." you muse.

Your dad looks uncomfortable for some reason "I really don't feel comfortable talking about this Taylor."

"Um okay?" You guess he insecure about his seduction techniques. While they probably have nothing on yours, they are probably fine.

Your dad sits there awkwardly next you looking like he is trying to think of something to say and failing. You are about to speak yourself when he finally speaks up "Do you think I could meet this hollow person now?"

"I don't see why not." you say "He should just be in the main area helping organize around the Transporter's boner." you say.

Your dad gives you a look that seems to say 'What the fuck?' "Do I even want to know?" he asks.

"Um maybe? I can't think of why you wouldn't want to know." you say unsure. Why would somebody ever not want to know something? Knowledge is the most amazing thing ever, sure sometimes it shatters your mind and what not, but when you manage to pieces your psyche back together your usually stronger for it.

He lets out a sigh and says "Lay it on me."

"Well let's see here... so our base was attacked by the Wyrm so I thought it need some extra defenses in case it happened again. The Transporter can make things invisible so I asked her to make the base invisible. But she said a invisible building sticks out more than a visible one so I guess she decided that a flying invisible building worked better? The thing is she didn't plan on people entering and leaving so we got a couple hundred people stuck up here." you explain.

"Huh. I think I actual understood what you just said. Well mostly." your dad says to himself. "Also a lot less weird then feared." Your dad stands up and you rise as well scooping Mt. Flufflekins up in your arms. You then lead your dad to main area were a bunch of people are arguing about this and that. The Hollow Man is leaning against one of the trees of ash, watching them biker

Your dad stares at your lodge looking disturbed "What... what is this Taylor?"

"It's my lodge." At his blank look you elaborate as you move towards the Hollow Man "It like a magical workshop and the center of my power." He simply gives a tired nod.

As the three of you make your way over to the Hollow Man, he spots you and moves towards you. "Hi Hallow Man! This is my dad, he wanted to meet you."

The Hollow Man raises his hand and says "It's pleasure to meet you."

Your dad takes his hand and says "I understand that you have been watching over my daughter?"

The Hollow Man grimaces and says "I try but she definitely makes it difficult to do so. She has a bad habit of wandering off without telling anybody and I only find out after she already landed herself in trouble." Jeez Hollow Man , way to make you sound totally irresponsible.

Your dad gives the Hollow Man a nod of understanding "I can imagine." Gasp! They are teaming up against you! Well your calling them team fuddy duddy, the jerks.

You glower at the both of them and sniff "Well excuse me! Which one of us banished a baku, overthrew a crime lord, cured drug addiction, defeated a dragon in single combat, and saved somebody from their kidnappers. Was it you, Hollow Man? How about you, Dad? Oh wait that was me!"

Your dad raises a eyebrow and says "That tone is completely unacceptable young lady. Now apologize to me and... by the way I am Danny, is your name actual Hollow Man."

You open your mouth to say of course it is when the Hollow Man speaks up "Ah. No, it is in fact Iwao and she does not owe me an apology." Since when? Gods the Hollow Man has a lot of names. "She has done me a great service and it would take me a life time to repay her."

Ha, now the Hollow Man is on your side, team Kick Ass. Your dad frowns but he seems to let it go. "By the way Taylor, do you have a way of letting people who wish to leave right now, reach the ground?" asks the Hollow Man

"I could get some spirits to bring people down I guess, but I don't know how they would be able to find us again." you say. "But if they really want to leave I won't stop them."

He nods and says "While you assist them I will be acquiring food. I would appreciate it if you stay here while I am gone."

"Alright." you say before wandering over to the crowd of your minions. "Right, so if you guys want to leave right now I can send you away, but it might be awhile before you come back. Just let me know if you want to leave okay?"

As people are deciding whether they rather stay or leave, plop down to a nearby tree. Your dad follows suit and says "Hey kiddo I am feeling a little out of it still, so I am going to take a nap." before closing his eyes. You lean against him as he rests. Over the next couple of hours thirty or so people trickle over and ask to leave.

* * *

Danny opened his eyes, blearily taking in his surroundings. He had to stop himself from panicking as he took in the room around him. The whole room had a sense of... wrongness that caused some deep animal part of him to recoil. It got worse if he actually focused on anything in particular. He instinctively knew that he was staring into the face of madness and if he looked too long his sanity would shatter. The trick to staying sane he found was to not focus on anything, allowing them to fade into background.

The fact that his daughter apparently made this... this place, did not comfort him at all, what it said about her was disturbing. Christ, his daughter. He looked over at her sleeping form leaning against him. Whatever Em- _that girl_ did to his daughter, it had broken his Taylor. He could tell that she was mad just by looking into her now blue eyes. They were like depthless pools of insanity.

God he had no idea what was going on anymore and even if he did he some doubted he would know what to do anyway. He had felt helpless when Taylor was withdrawing into herself and refused to talk to him. But now he was total lost. His daughter was insane and she had apparently killed people. How was he suppose to respond to that? Tell her to stop? Would she even listen to him?

Only after he sighed and rubbed his eyes he noticed Iwao leaning against a nearby tree watching them. Actually now that he looked closer Iwao was staring at his daughter as she slept with a strange intensity. 'Was everyone here insane?' wondered Danny. Judging by the fact that these people seemed to live in this place the answer was likely yes. He felt like he should say something about the way Iwao was watching his daughter, but the look in the man's eyes made him feel like that it was a bad idea.

Danny spent the next ten minutes watching Iwao watch Taylor before he finally spoke up "I need to talk you about Taylor." Iwao eyes flicked over to him before inclining his head. "What has she been doing? I could barely follow what she talking about half the time, but the things I did understand..." he trailed off. He couldn't bring himself to say that he was afraid of his daughter a little.

"I only know of some of what she has done. Like I said earlier she has a bad tendency to wonder off without telling me and getting a explanation of what happened afterwards is always difficult" said Iwao. "But here is what I know from speaking to her and others. She apparently woke up eighteen days ago with no memories and wondered around until she ran into me...

Danny sat and listened as Iwao spoke of the things that his daughter had done over the past two weeks and was unsure how to feel. Disturbed? Yes. But he could not help but feel proud of her as well. The way she went around helping those in need never asking anything in return, that she railed against the injustices committed by the various gangs, the fact that she still loved and forgave him after he failed her so spectacularly. Under all of the insanity was his little girl and he would help bring her out again even if he had no idea how.

* * *

Taylor woke as she rolled over the side of Mt. Flufflekins. As she watched the ground hurtle towards she let out a scream "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Oh wait I can fly." Taylor started flapping her wings earnestly and made her way to the ground. Mt. Flufflekins let out a trill of concern causing Taylor to reach over and pat his side reassuringly. "I am okay honey, I was just startled is all." With a frown Taylor went over the day's events. She was ecstatic that she got her dad back more or less unharmed and gained an apprentice, but she had failed elsewhere.

If Taylor learned anything from what happened today it was that she needed more power to fight off her various enemies. Today she had been captured and incapacitated repeatedly and that was completely unacceptable. She could have died if the PRT had wanted to end her life at any point. As much as she wanted to stay here with her son, doing so would only endanger the both of them in the long run. Even if the power beyond the gate would drive her further into madness it was worth it to keep her son and father safe. Her sanity was acceptable loss, her loved ones were not.

"Sorry honey but Mommy needs to go run some errands. I'll see you in the morning okay?" said Taylor. Her son let out a sad keening sound that broke her heart, but she couldn't stay, this was too important. Taylor walked through the archway and embraced the songs. Clang. Taylor winced as the song of steel played in the background, well she was going to avoid that one... No! That was the thoughts of somebody that gave up in the face adversity. She would not bend nor would she break just because something was hard.

She focused on the beating of iron on iron and moved forward. Pain. With every step she felt her whole body tremble in agony, but she would not stop, she would never stop. After fifteen minutes her wings could no longer keep her aloft, so she walked. After an hour her legs gave out under her, so she pulled herself forward with her hands. She reached the gate shaking and exhausted but triumphant. Fuck you pain! Fuck You! With a sudden surge of strength she pulled herself to her feet and stumbled inside.

Inside the archway was a giant smithy that never seemed to end. There were hundreds of racks covered in various weapons and armor of all kinds. In the center was a being, made of various metals melted together, pounding away at anvil. The air rippled with heat so intense she could smell her own flesh burning but Taylor ignored it, she was beyond pain now, she was steel. She walked up to the Molten One and spoke "Hi I'm Taylor! Who are you?"

The Molten One did not look up from its work but it did opened its mouth and a sound of grinding steel came out. Taylor could not make heads nor tails of it "Um okay? So you make stuff then?" It rumbled at her again, but nodded its head as well. "Cool cool. Mind if I look around?" It shook its head. Taylor wandered around looking at the various racks before stopping at one with some very particular blades.

The first was oddly enough made of wood. It had thorns sticking out the along where the edge normally be. The handle was also covered in thorns. The next blade looked to be made of rusted iron and snapped in half. Why the Molten one would keep this around was beyond her. The third blade was actually a piece of origami shaped like a long sword. This guy sure made odd blades. The last one had a blade that was pitch black and hilt shaped like a skull. Blood poured from it eyes and the screams of the damned came from it mouth. Yeesh.

"Hey do mind if I take one?" you ask the Molten One. It shakes its head.

Taylor stood there trying to decide which blade to choose. The evil blade was right out. She knew exactly what kind of thing that would happen if she touched that thing. She would probably be possessed or something and end up wearing her loved ones as skin suits. The wooden sword covered in thorns so it looked it would stab into her every time she would wield it meaning she would be bleeding all over the place, so pass. The rusty broken one probably was more powerful then it looked, but that could be also just what it wanted her to think, it could just be a piece of crap.

So Taylor decided n the paper sword. 'After all the pen is mightier than the sword. Wait that has nothing to do with paper. Um...' She couldn't think of any good sayings involving paper so she shrugged her shoulders and grabbed the paper blade. It felt extremely light in her hand, if she didn't know that it was there she wouldn't even notice its presence. Taylor watched in fascination as her tattoos crawled of her skin and onto the sword. She was the sword and the sword was her. Soon the blade was covered in the same sigils that were all across her body.

Taylor gave the sword a experimentally swing towards the ground. The edge seemed to split the air as her blade passed through it. She watched as the line in the air moved downward right into her foot, severing it completely. 'Whoopsie Daisy' thought Taylor as she lost her balance and landed face first onto to glowing metal floor. 'Mmmm. Something smells delicious' thought Taylor. The smell of cooking meat wafted through the air causing her mouth to water. Sitting up she grabbed the front half of her foot and placed it next to the stub before channeling healing magic throughout her body.

Taylor wiggled her toes and stood up. Good as new! She looked over at the Molten One and said "I meant to do that." It let out a ringing metallic noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. 'Wow this was one sharp blade.' She would have to be careful or she would lose an arm or something. She flipped it over and checked to see if a name was inscribed anywhere, but found nothing. "Hey does this sword have a name?" she asked.

The Molten One shook its head. Hmmm. She needed to give her new sword a name, all the best weapons have names. "You shall be Pulpinator" she declared. She was the best at names. She walked over to the Molten One and looked at the blade he was hammering away at. It appeared to be made of ice, which just confused her since the room was obviously hot from the ripples in the air. Also wouldn't ice crack and instead of reshape when hit with a hammer? Well she didn't know anything about blacksmithing so maybe she was wrong.

"Well I am going to head out for now then. See you around Molten One!" said Taylor as she waved goodbye. As she walked back to the sound of her son's song. She felt herself waking up.


	10. Day 19

You wake up to being shaken by your dad who is currently freaking the fuck out. "-or! Wake up! God fucking damn it!"

"Waaa? I'm awake. I'm awake." you say sleepily. Is this how your dad is going to wake you up every morning? You sure hope not.

"Oh thank Christ!" your dad pulls you into a hug and he sobbing uncontrollably into your shoulder babbling nonsense about you dying in your sleep or something. You notice as he is hugging you, you don't really seem to feel his arms around you. You give him a experimental squeeze and you can sort of feel a slight pressure against your skin but that's it. You also didn't notice earlier that your son is also currently pressing himself up against and looking up at you in worry. That's not good...

You pat your dad on the back and rub your son's head without really feeling it and say "There, there Dad I'm fine. See?"

"Taylor the skin on your face is burnt and partial melted!" he says hysterically.

Really? Huh. You channel some healing necrotic energy throughout your body. You don't feel any different, but you're pretty sure you did the spell right. It takes awhile for your dad to calm down, but after a few minutes of reassuring him your fine he settles down.

He stares into space with a haunted look on his face " You woke me up when you started screaming in your sleep. When you suddenly stopped scream I thought it was over, but then you started burning up right before my eyes and your foot came clean off. There was blood everywhere." Sure enough the ground and your dad are covered in blood. With a shrug you clean up all the blood with a quick spell. All better

"Well I'm fine now, so it's all good. At least this time I wasn't in coma for three days." you say cheerfully.

"Does... does that happen every time you go to sleep?" he asks with dread.

"I don't think so?" you say unsure "I mean I am asleep so can't really be sure, but I don't think I've ever melted before and the coma only happened that one time. Although I did also shrink a whole foot in my sleep."

"I wish I could forbid you from sleeping, but that would be ridiculous." mutters your dad.

You give him another shrug and say reassuringly "Well I haven't died yet in my sleep, sp I should be fine. I think anyways." You then notice Pulpinator leaning next to same tree as you. You pick up your sword and examine it. Where did you get this sword again? Oh well doesn't matter.

"Was that always there?" your dad asks confused.

"Who can say? When do things ever start existing? It could have been here since the dawn of time and we simply never noticed it before. Or maybe it just showed up five seconds ago. Perhaps it will cease to exist when stop looking at it and will only reappear when chose to think of it. And in those brief moments of nonexistence it wishes to scream for anybody to take notice of it, but it can't since it doesn't exist. However the important thing is that I got a cool new sword." you say.

Your dad leans back and thunks his head against the tree behind him and lets out a groan.

You spend the next couple of minutes experimenting with your new blade. It takes almost no force for it to go through the solid concrete floor. This thing is bitchin'. You bet you could slice straight through adamantine with this baby. While you would certainly enjoy spending the whole day stabbing things you unfortunately got a lot of things on your plate and only so much time to do them. You turn to your dad and apologetically say "So Dad I got a bunch of projects that I need to get done today so I can't really hang out and stuff, sorry. Running a guild takes a lot of work, but you can accompany me if you want."

Your dad sits up and says "I would like that Taylor. What are you working on now?" If you didn't know better you would say your dad sounded worried for some reason.

What should you get started on first? Well the most obvious thing is getting some sort of shuttle or steering system going on for your base. Sure you can leave whenever you want, but the rest of your guild is stuck up here. "I need to supervise the Transporter while she works on her next project, since she doesn't think things through like I do. So I am going to keep an eye on her shapely legs and smooth curves... and bountiful chest and-"

"I get the idea Taylor." says your dad cutting you off. Rude.

When the three of you make your way over to the Transporter's room you knock on her door and get no response. She doesn't respond but if you had to bet your immortal souls she is in the middle of tinker binge again, so walk in anyway. She is currently at her desk fiddling with one of the spare levitation spears and muttering to herself rapidly under her breath. "Hi!" you say. When she looks up you continue talking "Transporter this my dad. Dad this the super sexy Transporter." Both of them look uncomfortable for some reason.

"Um hey?" she says unsure. "Didn't even know that you had a dad. When did he get here?"

"It was yesterday?" you say hesitantly. To be honest you are unsure how long you were asleep this time so you aren't a hundred percent sure. "Anywho, I'm to help you with your project."

She snorts and says "And what do you know about tinkering?"

"Well when making a fly machine add landing features." you say smugly.

She glowers at you "Fine you can help."

"Great!" you exclaim before moving up close behind her and leaning over her to look at what she is doing, which is also an excellent excuse to press yourself up against her. As you lean up against her soft warm body which you can't really feel... Shit fuck cock! Oh gods this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you ever! What could you possible done to deserve this! You quickly run your hands along your thighs to see if you can get a reaction, but you get nothing "I can't even masturbate anymore!" you wail.

"What the fuck!" exclaims the Transporter. She and your dad are both giving you looks of horror, no doubt horrified at your terrible plight.

"I- what- I don't-" stutters your dad looking like he would rather be anywhere else then here right now.

You start to hyperventilating as the full weight of this disaster presses down on you. Your life is ruined! There will be no more sexy times ever again! Tears start to prickle at your eyes and the room starts to spin faster and faster. The voices are screaming at you to fix this and you don't know what to do. You try to think of something but the throes of panic grip your mind and you can't concentrate at all. You need to calm down if you are going to get anywhere so you start to sing softly to yourself. Your nerves start to settle and voices calm down to their usually maelstrom.

'Okay Taylor, you need think this through calmly and rationally' you think to yourself. First things first, you need to discover what the problem so you can plan out how to fix it. You start examining your aura in detail in order to discover any anomalies. It is difficult trying to parse through your aura due to copious amounts of wild, fae, divine, infernal, eldritch, and sheepy energies pulsing through your body, but after a few minutes you discover that your sense of touch has been flipped off for some reason.

You try and puzzle out why this happened for a few more minutes before figuring it out. Apparently your soul/body was going through so much pain that the 'breaker switch' regulating your ability to feel got flipped. You reach out and flip you sense of touch back on and poke yourself. You feel your skin press against skin and do a little dance. Success! Man that was easy to fix, just imagine if you panicked and did something extreme, like replacing your sense of sight with your sense of touch or overloaded your nervous system with magic and destroying it completely in the vain hope you could feel anything again.

"False alarm everybody, I can still masturbate!" you exclaim so that your father and the Transporter will stop worrying.

"I repeat, what the shitting fuck." replies the Transporter.

"Can fucks shit?" you ask curiously. "I mean sure you can shit during a fuck or fuck a shit, but could the fuck itself take a shit."

The Transporter buries her face in her hands and says "What in the world are you babbling about? You know what I don't even care, I am trying to work here unless you have something useful to say be quiet."

Jeez what's her problem? You look over to your dad for support, but he apparently left at some point. Weird. You fiddle with your pain switch and find that you can turn it on and off whenever you feel like it. Neat. That will be useful in fights and stuff. You look over at the Transporter who is still playing with her spear. "So what are you doing with that spear anyway?" you ask.

Without pausing from her work she says "I am trying to figure out how to scale the output of the propulsion so we can have a soft landing. It's not going so well."

"Why not?" you ask.

She responds with a bunch of gobbledygook that leaves you more unsure of what is going on than before.

You watch her work for a few more minutes before getting up and going over to the last remaining spear on the wall. Clearly the Transporter is terrible at her explaining herself and it is up you to solve this riddle on yourself. Well not everybody can be coherent as you are, so you guess you'll cut her some slack. You grabbed the spear and sit down on the floor, placing it on your lap.

You stare at its astral aura trying to puzzle out how it works. You never really bothered to learn much about the art of enchanting, it takes far too much time and resources for it to be practical for an adventurer like you. It is frankly much cheaper and quicker to go adventuring yourself to acquire magic items or if need be just buy them with the loot you gained from said adventuring. However you do know enough to identify and understand the properties of magical artifacts so you should be able to figure how what exactly the spear does.

Huh. The magic on this spear is weird. You guess that space parasite magic is fairly different then the branch of magic that you use, but you think you should be able to parse whatever the hell is going on here. You mumble to yourself as you try to sort through the ebbs and flow of the spears signature. After about an hour you think you got it more or less figured out.

The enchantment on the spear does four things. First it creates a magical web thing between it and the other spears using the large box in the center of the Transporter's workshop as a hub. Then the spears creates lines of force move along the magical web creating a sort of magical force rebar at the bottom of your base.

The webs then give off a reinforcing aura that hardens the nearby concrete so that it won't come apart when put under stress. The last effect is a levitation spell that pulls the whole thing up to a preset height. The levitation spell is actually pretty powerful since it can rip through non-magically reinforced concrete and lift the whole building up.

From what you can tell she failed to add even basic steering into her designs which is frankly ridiculous. She should have used a flight spell instead of levitation, any magic user could tell you that. You walk over to magical hub and study it to see if there is anything else that you missed. Unfortunately it looks like it just a big on and off switch.

You sigh and rub your face in exasperation. On one tentacle her spears are brilliant. If you found a way to produce them in large quantities you could create whole floating cities. On the other claw the fact it doesn't even have to ability to change the maximum/minimum height of the levitation is one of the stupidest things you have ever seen. You theories that one could add a slider to the enchantments but you lack to skill to pull it off. As you are about to give up one of the voices is in your head is babbling about how it could pull it off, it just needs control for a little while. With a shrug you give him control.

Riptooth blinked and shook his head as he took control of the host's body. He did a quick once over of his body to see what he had to work with. He was a taller and much more female than he was used to being, but he could live with it. Neither of which had any real impact on his work. His lack of claws on the other claw would be a huge pain in the ass. He often used them to take things apart and he was unused to such stubby nails.

Riptooth's eyes darted around the room with interest. There was so many different pieces of technology scattered around, he could hardly wait to take them all apart. He eagerly rummaged through his new clothing to see what tools he had to work with and found nothing. Really? He heard a voice to right and glanced at the human woman working nearby with scorn, ugh, mammals so gross and stupid. He then looked over the human's work with disgust, honestly a wyrmling could do better than this.

He still needed some tools if was going to fix this... this abomination! It was like that stupid gorilla was putting this together without really understanding what she doing and instead copied it from a picture book or something. Riptooth stomped over to the work desk and examined the tools on display. His lips curled in annoyance. The workshop was woefully inadequate for someone of his genius' He glowered and grabbed the best tools that he could find from the workbench ignoring the squawking of the fool. She obviously didn't know how to use them so he was doing her a favor by taking them from her anyway.

He then went to work taking apart the force staff as efficiently as possible. He stared at the parts inside in confusion unsure what most of them were. Let's see here the copper wire is for-

"Necros! What the fuck are you doing!?" yelled the ugly sow in front of Riptooth.

"Shut up you vile ape I am trying to work here." snapped Riptooth as he examined the components before him. She recoiled and backed away from him much to his satisfaction. He didn't have time for useless chit chat when he was working, not that he would talk to the lump of pink flesh anyway. His mind whirled as he puzzled out how it all came together and started to rearrange the parts.

There! He fixed the frankly amateurish mistakes that any idiot should have spotted and set aside the staff. Now that he understood how to fix them redesigning the rest should go by quickly and he could work on actually interesting things. He walked over the one of the holes in the floor and glared down it. How the nine hells was he suppose to fix these fucking things if they were a few dozen feet in the ground? The scaleless bitch didn't even design a way to retrieve them from the stone!

He looked over at the magic matrix at the center of the room with a thoughtful look before scuttling over to and pried its siding off. The human started shouting at him again and pulled him away from the box. With a growl Riptooth responded by hitting her between the eyes with a wrench. She slumped over on the floor unconscious and he spat on her in disgust before turning back to his work. He felt the host rage against him trying to seize control back from him, but he shoved her to the back of his head.

He grabbed a handful of wires and pulled them out viciously. The room he was in lurched and he could feel to whole building going into freefall, but he grabbed on to box to the steady himself. His soft human hands danced quickly across the various parts, discarding the unnecessary ones and adding in important ones that had been left out. Done! He gave the box a hearty kick and the buildings descent slowly came to a halt.

Ha! He was genius! Take that you soft skinned morons! He moved over to box that seemed to admit radiation. He frowned as examined it. This thing was so sloppily designed, how in the world were you suppose to kill anyone with all those features getting in the way? As he moved back to the workbench to get more tools, he gave the human's groaning form a kick in the face. A red hot spike of rage stabbed trough Redhook's brain and he blacked out.

You seize control of your body from that asshole prick of kobold and look down at the Transporter in a panic. Shit shit shit. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do that!" you babble as you reach down to help her up.

She slaps your arm away and hisses "Don't fucking touch me!" As she looks up at you she you see that she has broken nose and a black eye. You feel a strange sense of déjà vu. She shakily stands up to her feet using her desk as support. "Fuck I think I have a concussion." she mutters to herself.

"Here let me heal you." you say worriedly as reach out to her again.

She recoils and snarls "What did I just say you crazy bitch! I am not letting you lay a finger on me!"

You flinch and start to fidget in agitation. "I... look I was possessed by-"

"I don't fucking want to hear any of your bullshit excuses! Get the fuck out of me face!" She yells interrupting you.

You hesitate unsure of what to do when you notice that the Transporter has grabbed a knife from her work bench and is holding it so tightly that her hand is white. When you look at her face again you see behind all the rage that she is terrified. Terrified of you. You are going to murder that little bastard the first chance you get. You move slowly over to the door so you don't startle her as you leave.

Well shit. You stomp back towards your room ignoring the people around you. All that work of making her feel safe around you shot right down the fucking drain. The Hollow Man walks up to you quickly and says "Necros why were we falling a moment ago?"

"I was fixing the Transporter's floater thing and it had to be turned off for a bit, but we can land now." you say while trying to keep the frustration out of your voice, the Hollow Man does not deserve your ire.

He gives you a surprised look and says "Wait you fixed it? You can work on tinker tech?"

"Kind of." you say evasively. You really don't want to admit to your fuck up right now.

He gives you a smile and says "Well good job. Is Squealer landing the base now then."

You wince a little at the mention of the Transporter before you mumble "I uh don't know? She might be doing that, but I can't say for sure."

He gives you one of his penetrating Hollow Man stares and asks "Is something the matter?"

"Who can say?" you say trying to worm your way out of this discussion.

"You can." he say flatly. Damn, it looks like he saw through your cunning ruse.

"Well I may have done something um... rash in the name of expedience." you say nervously.

He rubs his brow and says "What did you do?"

"Well I uh don't know a lot about enchanting myself only the basics really... soImayhavegaveonethevoicesinmyheadcontrolofmybodyandheattackedthetransporterandnowsheisscaredtobeinthesameroomasme." you mumble quickly as possible without meeting the Hollow Man's eye.

"You gave a voice in your head control of your body." repeats the Hollow Man slowly. "That seems like a very... ill thought out action."

"I uh yeah." you say eloquently in response.

"Is she okay?" he asks.

"I think so, but she wouldn't let me heal her, so I can't really say." you say. "She was really mad at me." you say stating the obvious.

Grimacing the Hollow Man says "I will go check on her and make sure that she is alright."

"Thanks." you say. The Hollow Man sighs and gives your shoulder a squeeze before heading off to the Transporter's room.

You stand there staring into space feeling sorry for yourself before deciding you have more important things to be doing then having a pity party. For instance figuring out why your dad left so quickly earlier. Did you offend him or something? You can't think of anything that you said that would be objectionable but who knows? Frankly it would be just your luck if you somehow offended your dad with everything else that is happening right now. With a sigh you head out and start wandering through your forest of ash looking for your wayward dad.

After a couple of minutes you find your dad sitting by a tree with you son in his lap. Awwwww, they are bonding! So cute! You hustle on over and move up next to your dad before sitting down. You lean against him and say "Why did you run off earlier Dad?"

You dad gives you a embarrassed look and says while stroking Mt. Flufflekins' head "Well I... I guess I wasn't expecting my little girl to be so... sexually active."

"I wish." you mutter to yourself.

"What was that?" your dad says startled.

"What was what?" you say putting on your best confused face.

"I thought you... never mind. Anyway I suppose I was caught off guard and needed to go collect myself. I realize that I have been remiss as your father in that I have never talked to you about the birds and bees." he says.

You no longer have to fake your confusion as you are now totally lost. What do bird and bees have to do with anything? "Well if you want to talk about them go ahead, I guess?" you say baffled.

Your dad takes a deep breath says "So... I... shit..." before he falters awkwardly. You stare quizzically at your father waiting for him to say something. "So you know how reproduction works?"

Why in the world is he asking you about the reproductive cycles of birds and bees? You're no expert but you have a basic idea of how they reproduce. "Sure." you say with a nod.

"That's good. I guess it doesn't really apply so much to you since your gay." your dad says.

Wait how does he know you have been having gay thoughts recently!? Can your dad read minds or does he have some special dad powers!? Also how do birds and bees not apply to gay people? Do they repel flying creatures or something? You suppose that would be useful ability to have. "Okay?" you say unsure of why in the world he is telling you this.

"God this awkward." mutters your dad. "Do you have protection?"

"Why would I need protection?" you say starting at your dad with increasing confusion. You guess if you were to work with bees you would wear one of those bee keeper outfits, but it's not like you are going to be attacked bees out of the blue or anything.

"Well in your case to avoid catching a disease." your father says avoiding your eyes.

Your dad wants you to wear armor to keep you safe from bird diseases? "I already got some armor so no birds are going to infect me." you say with a shrug.

"Wait what?" your dad says bemused.

"I got body armor from the Hollow Man so birds should have trouble attacking me, I guess I could were full plate or something but it would kind of cumbersome." you elaborate. "Also I would need to find a set with wing holes."

Your dad stares at you before saying "Taylor what do you think we are talking about?"

"Birds and bees? You know the flying feathered things and the yellow buzzing insects?" you say. How dumb does your dad think you are.

Your dad buries his face in his hands and says "I am talking about sex."

Oh! Suddenly this whole conversation makes a lot more sense. Although you are kind of amused that your dad thinks he can tell you anything about sex that you already don't know. You probably know more about sex then everybody in this city combined. "I know plenty about that dad. I mean after all the partners I have had over the years, I think I know a thing or two about sex."

Your dad's face remains buried in his hands but he visibly twitches. "That's... a thing." he says sounding lost.

"If you want I can offer you some sex tips. I know it's been a while for you, since you haven't got any since Mom died, but with my help I am sure we could get you back on the saddle." you say.

"This is not how pictured this conversation going at all." mumbles your dad. While you can't see his face you can tell that he is blushing from the tips of his ears.

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about Dad. We all have dry spells." you say reassuringly.

Your dad lets out a whimper and says "Let's talk about something else! Anything else!"

You frown at your at your dad's reaction. Really it was just sex, it was nothing to be embarrassed about or anything, but you suppose you can respect his wishes for now. However this conversation is not over. "Fine." you say with disappointment "But if you ever change your mind and I will be more than willing to help out." Judging by the look on your dad's face you doubt he is going to be asking anytime soon.

You stare in to space as you try to think of something to talk about with your dad. Well if he isn't willing to listen to your advice maybe he would be willing to give you advice instead. You don't think your dad has ever been in the same situation that you are currently in with the Transporter, at least you hope not, but maybe he will give a fresh perspective. "Sooooo I did something... bad, like really really bad." you say uncomfortably. "And I have no idea how to fix it."

Your dad looks worried and says "What did you do Taylor?"

"I... well..." god you hate even admitting this out loud "See it seemed like a good idea at the time and it technically worked exactly like I wanted it to if you ignore the side effects."

"Just spit it out kiddo." says your dad.

"I let one the voices in my head takeover my body and he attacked the Transporter using my body." you say refusing to look at your dad's face.

"Christ Taylor." your dad says sounding so disappointed in you.

"It uh get worse." you say nervously. At his silence you continue "You see her ex was an abusive asshole prick that died far too quickly for my liking and I convinced her to end the relationship with him, by promising I would never do what he did to her. So yeah..."

Your dad lets a gusty sigh "I'm not really sure what you want me to say Taylor. I'm not a relationship counselor or psychologist, I have no idea how to do deal with former victims of abuse."

"I know." you mumble "But maybe you can give me an idea or something then I could work out the rest."

"...How did she respond?" you dad asks after a minute of silence.

"She was really angry and scared. Uh she wouldn't let me heal her or touch her. She grabbed a knife to protect herself with." you say wincing at the memory.

Running his hands through his hair your dad says "Did you explain why you attacked her."

"I didn't attack her!" you say angrily. Your dad just stares at you until you say "...no. She wouldn't let me explain. The Hollow Man said he would try to talk to her and explain what happened."

"I think... you should first wait for her to calm down and then let her decide if she wants to talk to you. It might help if she feels like she is in control of the situation. Don't approach her when she is alone, she might feel... trapped?" your dad says hesitantly as though he is not sure of his own advice.

Make her feel like she is control of the situation huh. You think you can work with that. You just need to give her the ability to take back what you took from her. You not a hundred percent sure how you're going to go about it, but you probably got time to figure something out if you put your mind to it. The two of you lapse into an awkward silence.

"Soooo." you say breaking the silence "You apparently got fired while you were kidnapped."

"Figures" grumbles your dad. He then starts muttering to himself about ungrateful bastards.

"I was thinking since I am running my own guild I could give you job. I got lots of paper moneys so I could probably pay you what you used to make." you say over his mumbled rant.

Your dad blinks in surprise "Where did you get that kind of money?"

"Well once I took over the guild I got access to a bunch of paper money stashes that the Despoiler had and the Hollow Man knew where the ABB was keeping its money, so with the Wyrm dead I got his hoard."

"How much money do you have?" asks your dad.

"I think the Hollow Man said I have around three million. Which is a lot right?" you say unsure.

"Yeah that is a lot of money." your dad says dryly.

"So you want a job?" you ask.

"What would I be doing?" he asks.

"Well I currently got a couple hundred dudes and dudettes in my guild. I think I will have less once some of them are cured of their addiction, since some of them talked about going home to their families. But I need help keeping track of all my minions and stuff, and I am really busy most of the time so I can't really do it be myself. Since that was your job before that should be right up your alley, right?"

"What are you doing for your health plan? Do you have dental? How much vacation do your employees get." questions your dad.

"I... what?" you say baffled.

"As a business you should have these things Taylor. If you plan on turning the Merchants into a legitimate business you need to have benefits for your employees." your dad lectures before pausing then asking. "What are the wages set at any way?"

"Um..." you say taken off guard.

"You are paying your employees right?" asks your dad.

"No?" you say unsure. Are you paying any of your minions? You can't remember the Hollow Man saying one way or another.

Your dad is frowning at you now "Look Taylor if you want me to work for you and your group you're going to have to do things right. I am union man through and through, and you are going to do right by your employees. Also how are you planning on making revenue?"

Guh. You didn't think that there would be test or anything to get your dad working for you. "Beating up jerks and taking their stuff?" you ask more than say.

"That does not sound sustainable Taylor." your dad says sternly. "You need business plan in place so you can keep your organization afloat."

"I thought that was the force field generators are for." you say confused. All this talk about business stuff is giving you a headache. "Um since you seem to know all about this stuff maybe you should decided on it?"

Your dad raises a eyebrow and says "That is highly irrespirable of you young lady. This stuff is important and I am not just going to do your job for you." Your dad then spends the next hour lecturing you on the various things you will need to run your guild. You regret everything.

You stare at your dad increasing horror and bafflement as he starts talking about 401ks and pensions, and decided that you must esca- you mean you have totally important tasks that you need doing. Like uh... contacting your apprentice! That is like super important and can't be put off for another second! Their life could be endangered at this very moment! "I have to interrupt your... lesson Dad. I just remembered that I got super important stuff I need to get done today and I don't have time for your... thing." you say.

Your dad gives you a suspicious look and says "Oh what is that you have to be doing that is so important."

"Well I haven't got a chance to tell my apprentice that my base is now invisible and floating in the around sky around, so they might not be able to find me." you say.

"Well go ahead and call them." says your dad.

You pull out your new talky box that the Hollow Man gave you last night and go to call them when you realize that their number was on the talky box that the PRT are to stole from you. "Fuck." you say annoyed. Right let's see if you can remember the number... maybe some of the voices remember it? Each voice chimes in with a different number leaving you even less sure of what is was before.

You sit there stewing in anger until you decide to use magic to fix the problem. You summon up Whispering-Wind and ask him to give your apprentice your new talky box array and then have them call you. Oh and make sure not be seen by people since Gandalf does not want their brother knowing about their wizardry. As you wait for your apprentice to call you, your dad speaks up "Well are you going to call them?"

"The PRT stole my talky box, the pricks, so I had to send my spirit friend to go give my new number to Gandalf." you say.

Your dad gives you a baffled look and after a moment says "So what you are saying is that you are just going to be sitting here and waiting, correct?"

"Um yes?" you say confused.

"Well then I guess we can continue what we were doing then." your dad says. Oh. Oh gods. Your dad starts up again on proper behavior in the work place and your soul starts to weep.

After another twenty minutes of your dad's lecture your talky box starts to ring. "Oh thank gods!" you exclaim and grab your talky box. "This is Necros!"

"Hey boss lady, got your message." says Gandalf the Black.

"Good! Right first thing that you need to know is don't answer any calls from my old talky box. The PRT has it and may use it to crank call you. Ne-" you say.

"Wait the PRT have my number! Shit!" they say.

"Um yeah?" Didn't you just say that?

"They can probably figure out who I am with that information." moans Gandalf.

"In that case you better head on over right away. You should bring your brother since they will probably use him to get to you since they are evil. Which brings me to part two of why I called. My base is now kind of mobile, invisible and in the air currently, but you can see it in astral space so finding it shouldn't be too hard."

"How am I suppose to get inside of it!" they say annoyed.

"Fly." you say confused. "How else are you suppose to reach something in the air?"

"I can't fly!" they say.

"Oh. Hmmm. Okay when you are right under my base just call me again and I will send a spirit to bring you up." you say.

"Explaining this to my brother is going to be a nightmare." they groan.

"If you want I could talk to him, I am great with people!" you say.

She lets out a cackle and says "That would be hilarious, but I should probably do it."

You are unsure why that would be humorous but that isn't really important so you shrug and say "See you soon." and end the call. You then remember that your dad is right next to you. Quick think of another excuse!

"I just remembered I need to make plans so I can find and destroy Cobol, so I can't talk about whatever it is you are talking about! Bye Dad!" you quickly blurt out as you jump to your feet and scramble for dear life to your room. That was a close one, fortunately you are as sneaky as you are subtle. But now that you are thinking about it you should probably actually make a plan for getting your sweet sweet murder vengeance.

First things first, finding the bastard. This is honestly the trickiest part since you don't have many leads. In fact you only have three: his old base, the spies in the PRT and your mysterious contact. You honestly doubt you will find anything useful in the pile of rubble that is his base and even if there was something finding it would be a bitch and s half. So file that one under maybe.

Finding one of his spies in the PRT base is would be like finding an asshole in an asshole stack. You don't know how many members are part of the PRT's army of evil, but you bet it is enough to be a huge pain in the ass to find the spies. Better then digging through tones of rubble in the vain hope that whatever clues were destroyed, but still terrible.

Finally you have your mysterious contact which is honestly your best lead. Unfortunately you don't have her number anymore since the PRT has your old talky box. You suppose you could break in to their head quarters to retrieve it, but for all you know it was already destroyed. Also you are pretty sure the Hollow Man would have conniption fit if you went and did that.

Ugh. You don't really have any good options here, if only you knew what his astral signature was, finding him would not be too difficult. Sure it would take a few days of wandering the city but you would be able to find him eventually, but you don't so you can't. You wander if there are local bounty hunters or trackers that you can hire to find him for you. You do after all have loads of money.

If none of those work, well if you can't find him you suppose you can make him find you. After all he is trying to kill you so he can complete is vague but evil plans. So you can use yourself as bait probably, but how to get him to know where you are... hmmm. Last time he found you because you left a message on your dad's machine so logically he would see any new messages when PRT did as well. You could no doubt also get your informant attention the same way now that you think about it.

Honestly tracking down Cornholio sounds like a headache and half by yourself. You have butt loads of cash so hiring some mercenaries to find and murder him for you, is much easier really. It would also free up your schedule, allowing you to do other more important things like mentor your apprentice and find some god damn booze. But what really sells you on this plan is the best place to find some swords for hire is naturally a local inn or bar, meaning hopefully you can finally get drunk.

Unfortunately you have no idea were any of those are, except for that one that burnt to the ground. Hmmm. You should ask the Hollow Man were the local bars of ill repute are, as a former criminal he should know these things. You open the door to your room and look both ways for your dad, in case he is lying in wait to ambush you another rant about workers rights.

The coast clear you go looking for the Hollow Man and after about ten minutes of slowly and sneakily searching for him in your forest of friendship and harmony, you find him. You scuttle up behind him and tap him on the shoulder. He jumps in surprise and his hands go for one his knives before he sees it is you. "Hi!" you exclaim.

He lets out a sigh of exasperation and says "Please don't do that."

You shrug and say "Okay. Anyway uh how did the talk with the Transporter go?"

"It could have gone worse." he replied "I do not believe that she is going to do anything more reckless or stupider than usual."

"That's... okay I guess. So anyway I have a plan for finding and killing Cunt." you say happily "We're going barhopping!"

"I... don't follow." replies the Hollow Man.

"Well since I am no expert at tracking nor do I know the city that well, I thought it would be best to hire some of the local scoundrels to track down Curtis." you explain.

"And this requires us to go barhopping why?" asks the Hollow Man.

"Where else would one go to hire mercenaries?" you say trying to keep the duh out of your voice. "Unless you know of mercenary group already that is good at their job."

He pauses before saying "I do know a group that might be willing to find Coil for you."

"Cool, where are they based."

The Hollow Man opens his mouth then closes before finally speaking slowly as if the words pained him "...in a bar."

You give the Hollow Man a smug smile and ask "So should we head over there now then?"

"I do not think we should just show up on their doorstep unannounced, I don't believe that Faultline would appreciate the gesture. I will arrange a meeting with Faultline and let you know when it is." he answers.

Your talky box suddenly starts buzzing so you say a quick "Excuse me." to the Hollow Man and answer it "Hello?"

"Uh boss." says your apprentice "What do you know about giant ghost bees?"

You frown in confusion and say "Well it would depend on lots of things to be honest. I mean it could be a dire bee that became a ghost or maybe it could be a magically awakened bee that can cast spells and only made itself look ghost like-"

Your apprentice interrupts you "According to me brothers friend we are also being attacked by zombie bee people. They uh have guns."

Zombie bee people? That sounds vaguely familiar now that you think about it but you are having trouble remembering from where. "Are you okay?" you ask worried.

"Yeah for now. We have this murder-beast on our side that is apparently tearing all of them several new assholes. But only me and him can see the ghost bees when they are invisible so we kind of need a place to hide out and rest, since one of us got stabbed." they say.

"Well my base should keep out any ghosts, bees or otherwise. So you and your friends can crash here if you want. I'll get me base moving towards you if give me your address and we can meet up." you reply.

"I'll let them know. Thanks boss." they quickly give you their current location and then hang up.

"Um can you tell the Transporter to pilot us towards this location. My apprentice is having an emergency." you say.

Brian looked up from the book he was reading and immediately regretted it. He looked down as quickly as possible with a grimace and hide the scene before him with his book. "For the last time Brutus put on some pants." Brian ordered before he tossed Brutus's emergency pants to him. Brutus caught them and awkwardly started to put them on while he muttered to himself about stupid human rules. Brian groaned into his hands as he watched Brutus put them on backwards. It had taken them several days of headache inducing arguments to convince him to wear pants at all so this was unbelievably a step up.

Unfortunately they couldn't convince Rachel and Brutus to stop ever having sex where ever they pleased. They didn't even care if anybody else was in the room with them. Alec still complained about what Rachel and Brutus did to their couch... and table... and Alec's bed. Brian was pretty sure that the last one was to get back at Alec for being Alec. With a loud thump Brutus fell to the ground entangled in his pants.

Brian blinked as he heard somebody coming up the stairs of the loft, everybody was already up here... Brian swore and jumped to his feet "Guys we got company!" Brian considered going for his helmet in his room but decided he didn't have the time. He moved quickly over to the stairs to see that it was Aisha in the most ridiculous outfit he had ever seen. "What are you wearing!?" he asked in disbelief. For some bizarre reason, that he was sure only made sense to her, she was dressed up in wizard robes and a hat with a obviously fake beard on her face. At least it covered more of her body then her usual outfits.

"My wizard clothes, duh." said Aisha condescendingly.

"Wait, what are you doing here? How do you even know where here is?" Brian demanded.

"I got bored one day and followed you here one time." she said with a shrug. "Anyway I joined Necros's gang yesterday and the PRT probably found my cell number on her phone, so they know who I am now. I am going to go crash at her place, thought you should know."

Brian's train of thought grounded to a halt and all that came out of his mouth was "What."

"Well they can look me up from my number, right? So can't stay at Mom's or Dad's or else they can find me." she said as this was the most obvious thing ever.

Brian's brain rebooted and he blurted out "Wait how did you ever meet that psycho!"

"I used my magic powers to find her and now I am her apprentice." she said.

"No." said Brian.

"What do you mean no? That totally happened." she replied.

"You are not living with the crazy murderous crime boss." replied Brian. As Brian spoke Lisa and Rachel walked out of the their rooms.

"Pfff. Like you could stop me." snorted Aisha. "What are you going to do coat me in darkness?"

Growling Brian opened his mouth to argue when Brutus spoke up "Bees."

"The fuck." said Aisha looking over Brian shoulder. Brian turned his head and was able to see a giant bee appear out of nowhere, just in time to move out of the way of its stinger. Brian watched Brutus shift back into his dog form, destroying his pants, and then moved so fast that he was blur and he ripped through the bee.

A yell of surprise came from Alec's room. Brutus turned and charged straight through the door and vanished into Alec's room. As they stared at the broken door to Alec's room another giant bee appeared above them. Aisha let out a noise of surprise and shot a beam of energy from her hands causing the bee to pop. "Wait when did you trigger?" Brian said confused and worried.

"She didn't" answered Lisa "She used that song that Necros put out the other week."

Brian opened his mouth to yell at Aisha for doing something so stupid when they heard the door on the first floor burst open. Brutus came back into main area dragging a swearing and bleeding Alec before dropping him and charging down the stairs. "What the fuck is going on!" groaned Alec.

"I-" began Lisa only to be interrupted by gunfire coming from below.

Rachel snarled and ran down the stairs with the rest of her dogs following after her. Brian sent down a cloud of darkness to give Rachel and her dogs cover. Once the gun fire stopped Brian turned to his sister and said "Stay here." and moved down the stairs quietly. Looking around he saw Rachel and hers dogs standing among several shredded bodies.

Seeing that the coast was clear Brian dropped his darkness. "Holy shit." muttered Lisa as she looked at the bodies "Those are Coil's guys. It looks like those bee things mastered them." As Brian looked closer at the gruesome mess he noticed that each of the men had things like antenna, fur, and compound eyes. "Shit. Whoever mastered these guys got to Coil and he knows all of our identities. We need to leave now."

"I'll go get Alec and Aisha." said Brian and he headed back up the stairs. Alec lay unmoving on the ground swearing to himself as Aisha was talking to somebody on her phone. "Guys we need to go. Coil knows where we are and apparently the bee things can take over peoples bodies."

"I would, but I can't fucking move." snapped Alec. Brian strode over to him and throw Alec over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Let's go Aisha." said Brian. She nodded and started to follow him while she continued to talk on the phone. When they got back down stairs Brain spoke "Lisa do you know any places that we can lie low?"

Lisa grimaced and shook her head "Nothing that Coil wouldn't know about."

Brian considered asking why Coil knew so much about them, but there were more important things they needed to figure out right now. Aisha hung up her phone and said "I got a place we can hide out at." Lisa stared at her for a second before she broke down crying.

You stand at the entrance of your hideout looking down into the city below as you wait for your apprentice to call you back. Your base is moving at a pretty good clip so you should be reaching their location at any moment. Well while you are waitinh you should prepare what you're going to say to Gandalf's brother. Making a good impression will no doubt waylay his fears. Hmm perhaps you should open with that you won't let their... Brother? Sister? ...Sibling! You won't let their sibling die like all the rest of your apprentices. Yes. That will put him at ease.

Hmm what else- your talky box starts to ring breaking your train of thought. "Yello?" you say into your talky box.

"Hey Tay-Tay your base is about to pass us." replies Gandalf.

"Oh. I'll let the Hollow Man know to hit the brakes. I am going to send someone to go pick you up in a sec." you say. You hang up and call the Hollow Man "Hey Hollow Man can you tell the Transporter to stop the fort?"

You hear the Hollow Man repeat your instructions to the Transporter before he says "Is that all?"

"I think so." you reply. You quickly summon Moves-Like-Wind and ask it to grab Gandalf and their friends. As Moves-Like-Wind zooms away, you continue speaking "Although we should probably start moving again once we pick them up. So start moving again in five minutes I guess."

"Very well then." replies the Hollow Man and he ends the call.

You hear somebody yelling "Mon tabarnak j'vais te décalisser la yeule, calice!" behind you and turn around to see who it is. You see a young teen with curly black hair lying on the ground with a large puppet with strings attached to it floating behind him. You notice the Puppeteer is bleeding so you hurry over and heal his arm. You check his aura quickly and notice that he is poisoned as well, paralyzing him, but is should were off in a few minutes.

"Hi I am Necros!" you say cheerfully.

He gives you an annoyed look and says "Who else would you be."

Well you suppose you could go by several different names now that you think about. Kale, Steve, Taylor, Red, Kat, Rana, Ora the God Queen and many more. All them suit you really, but you think you will stick with Taylor for now. You feel Moves-Like-Wind stop at your wards, apparently he is carrying a magic user. You give the magic user permission to enter and Moves-Like-Wind pops in dumping a naked dog-man on the ground before leaving. "Hello. Did you lose your pants?" you ask.

The dog-man gives you a nod and grunts "Yes."

"Yeah I know how that is. Always losing the bloody things." you say mournfully.

"Of course you do." mutters the Puppeteer. What's his problem?

You turn to your brother of pants related woes and say "I could ask the Hollow Man to get you some pants if you like."

"Pass." replies the dog-man.

As you give him a shrug Moves-Like-Wind dumps a manish looking girl on the ground, a wolf with spines coming out of its back drifting behind her. The Dire Wolf immediately moves over to dog-man and starts to fuss over him. Awww. Puppy love. So cute. As you watch the adorable domestic scene before you, your spirit body drops a sexy blonde at your feet. How considerate! On her shoulder is a four-tailed fox that starts yipping loudly into the Diviner's ear. She groans before closing her eyes and covering her ears. "What's up with her?" you ask the others.

"No clue." replies the Puppeteer, but the other two ignore you as they nuzzle each other.

You poke the Diviner causing her to flinch and curl up into ball whimpering. The fox starts to howl loudly, grating on your ears. 'Hey you shut up!' you say in astral space. The fox blinks and cocks its head at you before it turns back to the Diviner and opens its noise hole. You consider kicking the stupid thing, but your pretty sure it would try to maul you to death.

Gandalf the Black is brought up next and you give her a hug in greeting. "Yay, your back and not as a necromantic golem meant to assassinate me either!" Alas poor 14.

"What are the chances of that happening." Gandalf asks worried.

"Um one in forty nine I guess." you say unsure.

"The hell does that mean?" Gandalf sounding confused.

"Well-" you began but are interrupted by the cursing of your newest resident. He is a large bulky man with what appears to be a shadow with gleaming white teeth hovering over is shoulder. "Who's the Beef Cake?" you whisper super quite like to Gandalf.

They give you a perturbed look and says "That's my brother."

Well Gandalf has one sexy brot- Gah! The gay thoughts are back! You decide to quickly change the subject "So! Your poisoned friend should be able to move his limbs in about a minute."

"Thank fucking crisse." grumbles the Puppeteer as Moves-Like-Brings brings two large dogs into your base and then vanishes.

"So welcome tomy flying invisible base of doom!" you say happily to your new friends.

For some reason none of them but your apprentice look thrilled to be here. Maybe they are all just shy? Well it's your job as the host to make them comfortable in their temporary home. As you consider what to say the Diviner starts to rock back and forth a little, muttering to herself. "Is that normal?" you say gesturing towards the Diviner. She must be the crazy friend. Every group of friend has a crazy friend. Well except your group of friends.

"No." replies the Beef Cake frowning "That is pretty new. Lisa you okay?"

The Diviner groans and says "She does something to my power." gesturing towards something behind you. You look behind you but you don't see anybody. Hmm weird. "Right now it won't stop telling me about the mating habits of Otyugh."

You wrinkle your nose and say "Gross. Has it got to part about when they ejac-"

"Yes!" interrupts the Diviner. "Why are you doing this to me!" she wails.

You give her a confused look "Um what?"

"Don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about!" she raves at you like a lunatic.

Okay then. Clearly the Diviner is crazy "Whatever you say crazy lady."

"I am not the crazy one here!" she yells.

"Lisa please stop yelling at the person that killed Lung in a one on one fight." Hisses the Beef Cake. He gives you a strained smile "I am sorry for her behavior."

You give him a shrug "Don't worry about it. You can't hold the actions of the mentally ill against them." The Diviner makes weird snarly gurgling noise that you sure is only comprehensible to other crazy people.

The Puppeteer bursts out laughing from the ground and the Diviner kicks out into his side. He lets out a "oooofff" and rolls away from her before shakily getting to his feet. "So got any grub around here? " he asks amused.

You don't think so but you suppose that it is possible. "Why do you want grubs?" you ask unsure.

He snorts and says "I mean food."

"Oh! The kitchen is this way!" you say and lead them into the main area.

"Shit, I forgot how freaky it was in here." says Gandalf.

The rest of your guests look disturbed as well, well except the dog-man and the Dire Wolf. As you move through your lodge the Diviner starts to speak in the elder tongue. Something about your mother fornicating with goats. You inform her in the tongue your mother was a saint, thank you very much. For some reason everybody starts covering up their ears. When you reach the kitchen they all hurry in as quickly as possible casting nervous looks back at your lodge.

The Hollow Man walks in as they are settling down and eyes them before saying "So who are these people Necros?"

"Well that is Gandalf the Black, my apprentice." you say pointing at your apprentice. The Puppeteer bursts out laughing again. "That is their brother, Beef Cake. The one giggling is the Puppeteer. The crazy one is the Diviner. She is the Dire Wolf and that is her mate dog-man." you continue pointing at the rest.

The Hollow Man frowns and says "And how do you know that these people are safe?"

You shrug and say "Well they are in my wards so the bee ghost things shouldn't be able to get at them."

"That is not what I meant." he says with a sigh.

You cock your head to the side in confusion and ask "What do you mean?"

"I mean how do you know if they aren't planning on attacking you?" he responds.

You eye all of them before shrugging "Eh. I could take them."

The Beef Cake speaks up and says "We don't plan on staying long, just until we find a safe place to hide out."

"I am not going anywhere." says Gandalf.

"Damn it Aisha. She is-" the Beef Cake starts but cuts himself off and giving you a nervous look. "You are not staying here."

"How are you going to stop me?" they snap back.

"Um before either you decide anything, I strongly suggest that I take care of these ghost bee-things before you guys leave my wards." you say interrupting their fight.

The Beef Cake glowers at you and then immediately stops doing so once he realizes you are you. "Why do you suggest that?" he says as if he does not want to hear your answer.

"Well since they can pass through things like walls you literally have no way of stopping them from entering where ever your hiding out unless Gandalf puts up wards. Even then Gandalf is pretty new at all this so they probably don't know how to do it except by creating a lodge. Getting a lodge to be powerful enough to keep them out would take days and they would find you first." you say trying to reason with the Beef Cake.

The Beef Cake mulls over your words before looking at Gandalf and asks "Did any of that make any sense to you?" You roll your eyes at the Beef Cakes antics, clearly none of his beef went to his brains if he couldn't understand that.

"Um yeah it would take too long for me to put up shields to keep them out before they found us again." replies Gandalf.

"Also" you chime in "if you have wards up they will know exactly where you are and would wait for you to come out to attack you. I would really prefer if you stay Gandalf, I wouldn't want you go like 14, poor little guy was torn apart by wraiths."

Gandalf blinks and asks "14?"

"My fourteenth apprentice, what's his face, he walked into a local crypt and manage to anger the dead. So they well... let's just say there was no way he could be brought back from the dead if you know what I mean." you explain.

"Wait how many apprentices have you had." they ask sounding perplexed.

"Well you would be number 49." you say.

"Um how long have you been doing magic." asks Gandalf nervously.

"Hmmm a few thousand years give or take." you say after some thought.

"Wait, are you even from Earth Bet?" speaks up the Beef Cake.

"What is a Earth Bet? Is it some sort soil gambling center? I am not really into gambling or soil to be honest." you say confused. You receive a bunch of incredulous looks from everybody in the room including the Hollow Man. "Are you guys all into that sort of thing?"

"Earth Bet is the name of the planet and dimension that we reside in." explains the Hollow Man patiently.

"Is it?" you say with shrug "I don't usually worry about irrelevant details like that."

"That doesn't make any sense." mutters the Diviner "I know for a fact you are from Earth Bet and that you are fifteen years old."

"If you says so." you say placatingly to her. It's best not to argue with crazy folk, they just get upset. "Anyway where were we again? Oh! That's right ghost bees. I think it would be best if you guys stayed here while I get rid of them."

"Well I am staying here." replies the Puppeteer "I already got stabbed once. I don't plan on getting poked full of holes in my sleep."

The Beef Cake sighs before saying "Yeah I guess this is the best place to hang out for now." The Diviner slumps over on to your kitchen table and just let out a moan of despair.

"I need to get the rest of my dogs." growls the Dire Wolf.

"Sure." you say and pull out your map. "Where are they?" After a couple of minutes the two of you figure out where her pound is on the map and the Hollow Man goes to talk to the Transporter for you.

You bounce on the heels excitedly at the anticipating of meeting a whole bunch of doggies when something occurs to you. All your new guests except Gandalf and the dog-man are soul-bound. Weird. Are they part of a group of soul-bound or is it just a coincidence? Actually how common are soul-bound now that you think about it. "Hey is there a reason your all soul-bound?" you ask.

The Puppeteer raises an eyebrow and asks "What the hell does that mean?"

How can they not know what you are talking about? "You do remember making the contracts with your spirit-parasites right? That's why you call yourselves parahuman? Its short for parasite-human contract." you ask confused. You receive nothing but confused looks from the people in the room. Do none of them remember making the contract? You thought maybe the Transporter just forgot about it with all the drug use or something. "You do know where your powers came from right?"

"Nobody knows that." replies the Beef Cake.

"What nobody was smart enough just to ask a mage? They could have told you in like ten seconds how your powers work." you say baffled.

"We can?" says Gandalf in surprise.

"Yep. Just turn on your astral perception." you say.

Gandalf switches on their perception and observes her chums before saying "Yeah there is something attached to them. I don't really know what any of it means though, but I am pretty sure that they are alive."

The Diviner sits up and says "The two of you can see if people have powers!?"

"Yep and now that I have seen your auras I can always find you know matter what." you say reassuringly. For some reason none of them look pleased to know this.

The Diviner slowly says "So what you're saying as that once you see anyone you know if they have powers and you can track them down."

"Yep. So if my enemies manage to escape me I can hunt them down and murder them in their sleep." you say nodding. The Diviner and Beef Cake look at you in horror. "But enough about that unimportant stuff we should really talk about those parasites."

"What parasites." says the Beef Cake.

You sigh in exasperation "It's been like thirty seconds how could you already forgot about the parasites giving you powers." You get a bunch of blank looks from all of them. "Well?!" you say getting annoyed.

"Well what?" asks the Puppeteer bored.

"The parasites!" you almost yell in frustration.

"What in the world are you talking about?" asks the Diviner.

"Uh guys" speaks up Gandalf "we have been talking about them for like the last minute."

They give Gandalf a confused look before the Beef Cake says "No we haven't."

"Your friend are morons." you declare. "What kind of idiots forgets what they were told ten seconds ago."

"Um Tay? I think something is making them forget." says your apprentice.

You eye the parasites floating nearby and frown at them. Sneaky. Your apprentice turns to look at you and then shouts "Holy fucking shit! What the fuck is that!" She looks terrified.

You look over your shoulder but you don't see anything. You turn back to your apprentice "What are you talking about."

"Your aura!" they say hysterically looking at the ground "It's... it's... I don't even have words for whatever the fuck it is suppose to be! It feels wrong or something! "

Rude. "My aura is fine." you offended. You turn back to the soul-bound in the room and frown.

As you eye the parasite-spirits they eye you back. You can feel tension in the room slowly rising as the stare down between the two of you continues. These jerks are messing with your apprentice's family and friends, you consider doing a repeat of what you did with the baku but several things stop you.

Your pretty sure if you pick a fight with one of them the rest will jump in and attack you as well. In a fight between only one of them it could go either way. Five of them attacking you at the same time? You would be slaughtered. Clearly since violence won't fix this you instead opt to use the fine art of diplomacy.

 _So what's the haps?_

Most of them ignore you except for the kitsune, it cocks it's head in curiosity. [Query]

 _It's slang for how you doing._

[Acceptance][Assurance][Query]

 _That's good to hear. I am doing okay myself, could be doing better. So why are you always yapping in the Diviners ear._

[Confusion][Error]

 _Huh. Have you tired just asking me._

[...][Embarrassment][Query]

When you continue chitchatting with the kitsune, you learn that apparently it likes cataloging information and so it kept trying to use some sort of multi-dimensional scanning spell or something on you and was getting weird results. It also doesn't like to back down from a challenges so it refused to stop trying to scan you despite the fact doing it so made it start tripping balls.

Now that it can finally sate its curiosity it starts to bombard you with a bunch of questions about who you are, where you from, and questions along those lines. The Diviner sits up at some point during your conversation and seems to relax a little. She speaks up after a bit "Huh, suddenly my power is working right again."

"Yeah it was being kind of stubborn and kept trying to scan me even though it knew it was a bad idea. But its pride demanded that it keep trying." you say to the Diviner while to side you answer some more the kitsune's questions.

"Wait you can speak to powers?" the Diviner says "Actually you know what? I am not even surprised anymore to be honest."

Gandalf speaks up and says "I don't know if I would call it speaking. It's... hard to describe."

"Well whatever you did my power is not going haywire anymore, mind you it still gives me complete nonsense about you if I focus on you at like. Like that you a several millennia old, but at least it seems to be relevant nonsense." says the Diviner.

You give her a thumbs up before trying to convince the kitsune to stop deleting the Diviners memories but it seems pretty stubborn about the whole thing. You spend a great deal of time arguing about the issue but it refuses to budge on it at all. You turn to the other parasite-spirits, while the tension from earlier is gone they still don't seem particularly interested speaking to you. But you are pretty good at making friends when you want to so you could probably turn them around eventually.

After a moment of contemplation you decide to shelve speaking to the rest of the parasite-spirits later once you have dealt with the more pressing issues like the ghost bees. You turn back to Gandalf's fellowship and ask "So have any of you been desecrating any ancient Indian bee farms?"

The Puppeeter burst out laughing for some reason. The Beef Cake slugs him in the shoulder before turning to you and saying "This isn't a joke, our lives are in danger, take this seriously."

You make an offended noise and say "I am taking this seriously thank you very much! I am not the one who was stupid enough to piss of some sort bee catacomb, unlike you chumps."

The Beef Cake takes a deep breath before responding "No we haven't been messing around in bee farms."

You tap your chin in thought and say "Well you must of have done something to piss them off. Ghosts tend to keep to their territory unless you manage to make them angry enough to leave. They don't usually just leave their haunting ground for no reason at all."

"Well we know that they are related to Coil in some way, since they took over some of his mercenaries. I am pretty sure whatever got his mercs is working with or controlling him." says the Diviner.

 _ **Coffin!**_ You let a growl of anger causing everyone in the room to take a step back. Of course it all makes sense now. Since he failed to kill you and lost your dad, he decided to capture your apprentice and use them against you. Well now you have a lead to find him again. If you follow the ghost bees back to their base you should be able to find him. "I see." you say a smile growing on your face. For some reason the Fellowship seems to flinch and give you nervous looks.

"What do you see?" asks the Beef Cake nervously.

"Vengeance." you say with a giggle before turning to the Diviner "So you said you knew it was Corpse and his men that are working with the bees? Out of curiosity how did you know?"

"We talked about this on the phone remember?" replies the Diviner.

You blink in confusion for a moment before it clicks in your head "You're the Informant!" you say surprised. You run over and give her a hug "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

"Gah!" says the Diviner flailing her arms around in a panic. You guess she isn't a hug person?

"Informant? What does she mean by that Lisa?" says the Beef Cake sounding unhappy.

The Diviner paused before saying "Coil kidnapped her father and I helped her out for a favor."

"Yep. She helped me out even though Colony was her boss and all she wanted in return was for me till kill him. Which I was going to do anyway so it was win-win for me." you chime in helpfully.

"What." says the Beef Cake. He suddenly looks very very unhappy.

The Diviner is glaring at you for some reason. She turns to the Beef Cake and says "Look Brian, he has been pointing a gun at my head to make me work for him from the start. I saw the chance to get rid of him and I took it. I'm only sorry that Necros didn't actually kill him."

"Sorry about that, but the Construct bum rushed me." you say apologetically.

"Yeah I know, I saw the report. Thanks for not mentioning me to the PRT." she says. You give her another thumbs up. "Also Brian he decided to kill all of us instead of just me, so what does that tell you about him?"

"So what I am hearing here is that Lisa tried to get our meal ticket killed and then he sent bees to murder us." pipes in the Puppeteer. "That means we are fired right?"

The Beef Cake rubs his the bridge of his nose and says "Yes, Alec we're fired."

Fired, huh? You can always use more minions now that you think about it. You are sure that they are competent at whatever it is that they do, so your try to snap them up before one of your enemies hires them. "So... you guys need jobs so I was thinking-"

"Oh god no!" says the Diviner in pure horror, causing you to blink in confusion. Why did she randomly shout that?

"Um okay?" you say confused. "So as I was saying-"

"It's not happening." say the Diviner interrupts you once more. Who in the world is she talking to?

"Um please stop interrupting me please?" you say a little annoyed. You eye her to make sure that she won't have another sudden outburst but she keeps her mouth shut. "So you guys want a job?"

"No" say the Diviner and the Beef Cake simultaneously causing you to pout. They could have at least thought about it a little. You turn hopefully towards the Dire Wolf, the dog-man and the Puppeteer.

"How much you paying?" asks the Puppeteer in a bored tone.

"Um how much were you be paying before?" you ask. You are still pretty shaky on the exact value of paper money, _snort_ , so hearing what he used to make will give you a idea of what you should offer him.

"2k a month as a retainer and then paid to do specific jobs. The pay for those varied depending on how difficult they were. We also had the right to say no to a job." he replies.

Hmmm. Your pretty sure you can match that money wise, but one thing is bugging you about that deal "But couldn't you just take the retainer and then say no to all the jobs?"

The Puppeteer pauses for a moment and then says "Shit. I wish I thought of that earlier."

"Well you if you're working for me you can't do that anyway. You only will get paid if you actual do things, but otherwise I am willing to match Columbo's deal." you say. The Puppeteer starts to consider your offer when something occurs to you "Just one more thing, what was it you did anyway?"

The Beef Cake face palms in the background for some reasons. "We were getaway thieves." says the Puppeteer. "Usually the boss would have steal something for him."

That does sound useful now that you think about it. You can have them steal from your many enemies and help finance your organization. "Hmm that does sound useful. So how about this, I pay you two thousand a month if you at least do one job for me a month and then I also pay you for whatever jobs you accept as well."

The Puppeteer says "I'm in as long as you don't fire me by sicking giant bees on me."

"Deal!" you say. "How about you?" you ask the Dire Wolf and her mate.

She stares you in the eye for about minute before final grunting "Sure."

"Great!" you say beaming at her before turning back to the two Debbie downers that decided to opt out and say "You guys sure you don't want a job~"

"Yes." they say simultaneously. Man how are they doing that?

"Your lose." you say with a sniff.

"I am getting paid?" ask your apprentice.

"Why would I pay you for the right to teach you? If anything you should be paying me." you ask confused. Seeing your apprentice starting to sulk you add "I guess I can give you an allowance?"

They immediately brighten up and say "Sweet."

The Hollow Man walks into the room and says "We are right next to the pound."

"Cool." you say before turning to the Dire Wolf "So let's go grab your doggies then." She gives you a grunt of acknowledgment and follows you and the Hollow Man to the main doors of your warehouse. You summon up the spirit of the nearby pound and quickly explain that you need it to escort the Dire Wolf and her doggies back and forth. It gives you a nod of understanding and brings the Dire Wolf and the dog-man down to the pound. "Uh we should probably escort them in case the bees come back." you say to Hollow Man.

He frowns in disapproval but does not argue with you about it. With a sigh he teleports to street below. As you are about to leave you consider bringing your son down with you, but decide that he would be safer up here with his grandpa. You fly down next to the Hollow Man and keep a look out for the ghost bees.

It takes twenty or so minutes but the Dire Wolf manages to retrieve all of her dogs and your spirit buddy brings them all back up to the base. You know what you need to do? Give your base a bitchin name. It is flying invisible fortress so just calling it your base seems kind of lame. Hmmm. Flyie floaty base? No. Let's see here... oooh the Necropolis! It's perfect!

The Hollow Man makes a coughing noise and you look over at him in confusion. He lets out a sigh and asks "Are we going back up anytime soon?"

"Um yeah... actually now that I think about it since we are both already out here we should go investigate the ghost bees." you say.

"That seems rather... sudden." he says neutrally. "Where do you plan on looking?"

Where do you plan looking, now that you think about it? Hmmmm. Well you know for a fact that they were at one point at the Fellowships base so that would probably be a good starting place. Local bee farms would also be a good place to check out if that doesn't pan out. You pull out your map and point "We know that they were attacked here, so we should start there for now." you respond.

The Hollow Man gives you a nod of acceptance and you quickly make the both of you invisible before the two you fly/teleport over to scene of the attack. After about twenty minutes the two of you are surveying the building from a nearby rooftop. You check out the nearby air space for any ghost but you don't see any of them floating around. You turn to the Hollow Man and say "Do you see anything odd?"

He does not answer for about a minute before saying "Beside the door being kicked in, I don't see anything odd."

"Well let's look inside and see if we can find any clues." you respond. The two of you make your way over to the broken door and peer inside. You see quite a bit of blood and some mangled bodies all over the floor. You cautiously walkover to them and examine them. These must be the bodies that were possessed by the ghosts, judging by the bee-like mutations that they have. Which is odd since ghosts don't usually permanently change how their victim looks. Of course the people who told you that they were ghosts didn't seem to know anything about magic, so they probably couldn't tell you the difference between a specter and a wraith.

Let's see here, what kind of incorporable creature's mutate their victims. Your honestly drawing a blank here, which is weird since after all the things you have seen you usually don't have trouble identifying things. Well maybe their description was inaccurate, so instead of focusing on ghost-like beings, you think about bee-like monsters. Intelligent spell casting bees? Evil druids? Summons of a bee themed necromancer? A-

Your train of thought is derailed when you notice a distant buzzing noise coming from the floor above. Well that was easier then you thought this was going to be. You mutter to the Hollow Man "They left a watch bee upstairs. I am going to go see if I can catch it." You then make your way up the stairs quietly with your notice me not field wrapped around you. As you peek over the top of the railing you see- OH FUCKING GODS THAT IS NOT A GHOST! HOW CAN ANYONE MISTAKE THAT FOR A GHOST! The insect spirit notices you as you notice it. It turns around and starts to move towards the nearest wall.

You move as quickly as you possibly can and call out to the spirit of this place. Den-of-Thieves manifests in astral space and you quickly order it to grab the bee before it can make its escape. Den-of-Thieves pounces and grabs onto the struggling bee giving you time to examine it. Huh. It is a lot weaker then you initially thought it would be. You can only assume the shaman is still new at this, judging by the fact she would create something so... underwhelming. Still the threat is still very real. For all you know this could have been a early experiment and they have gotten much better since then.

You remember that the Hollow Man is still down stairs and vulnerable to bee attacks so call out to him "Hey Hollow Man can you come up? We are in a lot more danger then I thought and it's best if you stick close to me."

The Hollow Man comes up the stairs quickly and looks around the room "What did you find?"

You go to motion to the insect spirit before remembering it is in astral space and he can't detect it. "It turns out its not bee ghost at all, but instead a bee spirits which is a bajillion times worse. You can't see it but I caught the one that was sent here to keep guard."

The Hollow Man merely nods in acceptance and asks "What in particular makes them so dangerous?"

"Unlike bee ghosts which are the bees with unfinished business in the living world, bee spirits are parasitic spirits that need host bodies to stay in the material plane. If left unchecked they will overrun entire cities using all living people within as materials to expand their hive."

"So what your saying is that we have a Nilbog situation?" he says sounding very concerned.

"Nilbogs? What in the world do they have to with insect spirits? While super annoying if you don't know about their weird, damage heals them and healing damages them racial trait, they aren't really a threat." you say totally confused. The Hollow Man can be so random at times.

Without missing a beat the Hollow Man answers your question "I am referring to a man called Nilbog. He was apparently able to turn organic matter into creatures and harvested the people in the city he was in. He over ran the city he was in and the city has been quarantined ever since."

"Oh. Then yes we got something like that going on. We need to find and kill the shaman before they manage to summon the queen of their hive. Once that happens things are going to go to shit so fast." you say.

The insect spirit in your possession it suddenly stops struggling and speaks in off putting buzzing voice "Taylor! I should have know you were beehive this! You always ruin everything!"

Huh you don't remember ever meeting any bee shamans before so you guess your reputation precedes you. "Well evildoer, it is my solemn duty to smite douche bags. So of course I ruined your evil plans."

"Ha! Like you could ever stop me you pathetic weakling!" they gloat.

"Who are you speaking to?" asks the Hollow Man puzzled.

Whoops you forgot he can't see astral space again. "Sorry Hollow Man just a sec." you say before addressing the bee "Look if we are going to talk, I am going to need you to manifest, it's rude excluding the Hollow Man."

"Seriously." says the bee in a flat tone.

"Yep." you say with a nod.

"Fine then! Beehold my glorious servant!" they scream as they appear in the physical realm. "As I was saying Taylor, your pathetic prey and I am the ultimate predator, the bee!"

"Um what? You are a bee, you know that they eat only nectar and pollen right?" you say confused. Somebody failed their knowledge nature check.

You are met with a moment of silence before they say "Shut up! You think you are so smart Taylor, but I have always been better then you!"

"Whatever you say who ever you are." you say not really paying much attention. After hearing a few thousand villain speeches you tend to tune them out.

"...How do you not who I am!?" they say sounding offended.

"Should I?" you ask baffled.

"It's me Emma, you dumb bitch!" they say.

"Who?" you ask puzzled.

"W-what!?" they stutter "How do you not remember me!?"

"I'm sorry?" you say unsure. "I don't think I have met a Emily before."

"... **I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!**.." they keep screaming for some reason.Whoever this person is, they seem like a crazy person.

Suddenly a swarm of bees coming phasing through all sides of the room, going straight for you. Oh shit! You swing the Pulpinator widely, which has always been in your hand and always will be, bisecting the nearest bee. You began to dodge like a mad lady as you flail your blade around. After a solid minute of constant bee attacks you seemed to have cleared the room. The room itself was swiss cheesed by the wild swings of your blade and looks like it might collapse soon. The Hollow Man had apparently thrown himself down the stairwell to avoid your onslaught. "Oops! Sorry Hollow Man! You okay!"

"Yes" comes his voice from the stairs.

You turn back to the bee which is chanting "... **HATE** **HATE** **HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE**... "

You watch the bee ramble about hate for another minute before getting bored. "Well it's been... something, Ella, but I got to get going." You turn to Hollow Man and say "We should probably get back to the base and make new schemes now that the I know the info I got was bad."

The Hollow Man shrugs and says "Alright then. Do you think we will be attacked along the way?"

You study the angry buzzing bee and say "Maybe? It's hard to tell really, but I am leaning towards no. Judging by how angry she is I think she used all of her non-flesh formed spirits right then, so if we move quickly enough it shouldn't really be a problem."

"Very well then." says the Hollow Man and gestures towards the stairs. As you go to leave you remember the bee behind you. Hmmm. You should take it back to your base and see if you can use it to track down the shaman. You motion for Den-of-Thieves to follow you and leave the building. As you and the Hollow Man move to a nearby rooftop you hear a loud creaking sound behind you. When you turn to look you see the Fellowship's base collapse inward. Wow what a piece of shit, it just fell apart at the drop of a hat for no reason.

As you and the Hollow Man make your way back to the Necropolis the bee swears profusely at you and says some very mean things. After half an half or so the four of you make it to street below you base. You quickly fly up to the main entrance and pull open the door. You give permission for the bee to enter as well and once Den-of-Thieves pulls it through your wards, you take away its permission so it can't leave.

Your apprentice was apparently waiting for you by the entrance and says "Hey where did you- oh." They pause when they see the struggling bee and then continue "So you went hunting for the ghost bees then?"

"Those are not ghost bees." you grumble "That is a insect spirit which is like a hundred times worse."

"Um whoops?" they reply unsure.

You let out a sigh and say "It's okay you are new at this, so you are going to make mistakes once and awhile. When you get as good me you no longer have to worry about messing up." The Hollow Man makes a weird choking noise behind you. You give him a look of concern but he seems alright.

"So what happened." asks your apprentice over the bee's vigorous cursing.

"Well I went to check your brother's base for clues only to find that a watch bee had been left behind." you say gesturing to the bee behind you. "I caught it and the shaman that controls the bee's used it to start rambling about their evil plans till they got offended for some reason and then sicked some more bees on me. I killed them and then decided to leave around then. Hmmm that's about it."

"Huh. So what's so bad about bee spirits." they ask.

The Hollow Man speaks up and says "You are familiar with Nilbog?"

"Fuck." replies your apprentice.

"Anyway I am going to go so if I can track down the shaman with this bee right now. I'll be in my room." you say.

"You'll never beat me Taylor! You hear me! Never!" howls the bee.

"Yeah. Yeah." you say absently as you had towards your room. You look around your room to make sure your dad isn't about to ambush you with pension plans before heading in. You settle down on your mattress before examining the bee in more detail. Hmm what to do, what to do? You can't see the connection between the spirit and the shaman so you can't just follow a trail or anything... Oh! Insect spirits are always have a hive mind linked to their shaman. You bet you could use that find Erica.

You puzzle out how you should go about using the hive mind to your advantage when an idea strikes you. You could force your way into the hive mind and know exactly where she is. Nothing could possible go wrong! You place your hand on the bee's head and focus on its aura. You slowly reach out with your very essence and try to connect your souls together. "W-what are you doing?!" says Erin in a panicked voice, so you must be doing something right!

You feel a click inside your head and connect to the hive mind. You hear several dozen agonized screaming voice made of buzzing bees and one human girl. You see where she is and suddenly you are kicked out. You think you hear a rat like voice scream something like "What the shiting fuck is wrong with you, you stupid moron!" as you pass out.

Rana scribbled enthusiastically on her parchment as she hit another break through. She had finally got out of her rut when she finished that acid blood spell , thanks to that pixie that came by the other... century? She couldn't really remember what the pixie's name was anymore, but she was pretty sure it started with a T, or was it a Z? The important thing was that the pixie gave her boost of inspiration and had helped her through a block that she had been having.

As Rana was putting the finishing touches on her next master piece she felt the whole room start to rumble violently. Looking up in alarm she saw her book shelves start to fall over. Her books! Jumping to her feet she scrambled to nearest shelf to stabilize it, when in tear in reality popped in front of her and sucked her in.

Rana's head was spinning violently as she lay on the ground trying to not throw up. "What's going on?" she mumbled to herself. After a minute she felt more like herself and stood up. "Wait am I taller?" she blurted out in confusion. She used to be under four feet and now she had to be at least over five. And why in the world was she wearing shoes? Looking around she found herself in a unfamiliar room with weird light globes in the ceiling.

Spotting a window Rana moved over to it quickly to check out her reflection. Her tattoos where gone! She also blonde now for some bizarre reason. 'What in the world is going on?' Outside the window was a huge city made of glass and steel. Puzzled Rana stared at the city in bafflement before her confusion turned to excitement. A whole new place to explore! She slid the window open and hoped out only to realize she was thirty something feet in the air. She quickly cast feather fall and floated slowly to the ground.

Huh her magic felt weird. Crap she was must have been pulled away from the main body and most of the magical power that came with it. The body she was currently felt much weaker. Well she could increase its magical strength over time. She kicked off her uncomfortable shoes and stared at her tiny feet mournfully. Her beautiful feet were gone! With sigh she pulled herself together. It didn't matter what she looked like! She had experiments to perform!

Oooh there was so much to see and do in this new city! She wondered if anybody would be willing to let her test her magical plagues on them. As she wandered around the city taking in the sights she noticed a wolf shaman sitting under the largest bridge she had ever seen. He looked so despondent and lost that she decided to go cheer him up. Walking over she gave him a friendly wave and said "Hi! I am Rana. Who are you?"

The wolf shaman looked taken aback for some reason said "Sorry?"

"I'm Rana. What's your name?" she asked again.

"Um Theo." he replied.

"Well Theo, what's eating you?"

"Huh?" he replied eloquently.

Rana let a huff out and said "Try and keep up Theo. You look sad and stuff. What's the matter."

He stared at her unsure before finally saying "I did something really stupid and I can't undo it."

"We all do dumb stuff Theo, it's not really a big deal." Rana said patting him on the shoulder causing him to flinch.

Theo didn't say anything staring in to space for a several minutes but Rana waited patiently for him to speak. He finally blurted out "I killed my father."

"Well who hasn't?" said Rana with a shrug.

Theo stared at her bug eyed "You killed your father?! Why would you do that?!"

"Hey! Who are you to judge me! You did that same thing." Rana snapped back "And for your information he was _**RAPIST**_ asshole. Also not my real dad, but I thought he was at the time so it really doesn't matter."

Theo looked extremely uncomfortable "I-i uh s-sorry." he stuttered.

Rana sighed and said "It's fine, you didn't know. Anyway why did you kill your dad?"

"I..." he started before he trailed off. "I did it to protect my sister."

"Well then what's the problem then? Your dad was a jack off who was hurting your sister, you did the right thing." replied Rana.

"It's more complicated than that." said Theo.

"It really isn't." replied Rana "But okay was your dad a good guy?"

"No he was a terrible person." muttered Theo.

"So what your telling me is that your dad was a shitlord and was going to hurt your sister so you killed him. And you feel **bad** about killing him? Why!?" said Rana in disbelief.

"I can't explain it." he said.

"Well I am forbidding you from feeling bad about it." Rana said imperiously.

"That doesn't-" began Theo before he cut himself off at Rana's glare.

"I said I forbid it and that is final." commanded Rana. Theo nodded quickly and didn't say anything. Clearly this Theo kid was hopeless and needed to be taken under somebody's wing. "Well Theo it is decided then you shall be my apprentice hence forth."

"Wait what?" said Theo.

Denat blinked as he felt a strange wrenching sensation and found himself outside of his cage. Aha! Freedom! He can finally continue his great works! Wait why were his arms so stubby and his hands pudgy? He looked around at room and found himself surrounded by children and one female adult. They appeared to be all sitting at desks with the adult in the front with a chalkboard. Was he inside some sort of mage academy for children? He quickly scanned the others to check them for **EVIL** and found them all pure of heart. Good. He would not have to reeducate any of them.

"You there, female mage! Where am I!" he asked bombastically.

"Eric! If you wish to speak raise your hand!" snapped the magling.

Denat raised his hand and bellowed "Cease these lies at once! I am not this Eric! I am Denat the Redeemer! Now answer my question!"

"Eric this kind a behavior is unacceptable! You are going into the time out corner." she said pointing at the corner at the back of the room.

"Nay, professor of the arcane arts, I refuse!" Denat exclaimed leaving his desk "I must go! There is **JUSTICE** to be done!"

"Eric you will-" she said red faced but he ignored her and strode out the class room. It took him a few minutes but he managed to find his way out. The city was one like he never seen before but it did not matter only **JUSTICE** mattered. He wandered the street looking for wayward sheep that needed to be brought back on to path of righteousness. After a few minutes he found some obvious criminal scum and scanned them for **EVIL** and found corruption in their hearts.

"You three turn and face my righteous wrath!" he commanded.

"Fuck off kid." one of the goons said dismissively.

"Fools! I am no child goat! I am Denat the Redeemer. **REJOICE** your redemption is at hand!" he bellowed. He went to draw his sword only to realize that he lacked his blade and armor. No matter he would use his fists of **JUSTICE**.

He charged the three screaming at the top of his lungs and kicked out at the closest goon's knee cap, shattering it one blow. As the goon went down screaming one of the others yelled "What the shit!" and went for something in his clothing. But he was not fast enough as Denat buried his fist into the fool's manhood.

When he turned to last **EVILDOER** he saw that had drawn one of those useless black powder devices. "Back off kid or I swear to god I'll shoot!" said the terrified goon.

Denat scoffed and said "Go right ahead fool. I'll even let you have a free shot."

The man stood there his hands shaking before dropping his flintlock. "Okay I give. I am not fighting no cape."

"A wise move!" proclaimed Denat "It shall make your reeducation much less painful!" Hmm. It looked like the second one had dropped a knife. Denat bent down a picked up. It would be useful for the lessons that these three would need to be taught.

"Reeducation?" the man asked nervously eyeing the knife.

"I shall save your soul from darkness before I kill you of course!" he said "Do not worry the pain shall only be momentary as I cleanse you!" The man stared at him in horror and scrambled for his flintlock. Denat merely watched, tsking in disappointment. The man pointed his flintlock and fired repeatedly into Denat. Denat ignored the pain as the bullets ripped useless through his flesh. "Hmm I guess our session will be longer then I thought it would be!" he said as healing magic coursed through him closing his wounds.

Gaulg blinked at the sudden brightness of the sun hurt his eyes. He could not remembered the last time he had seen the wretched thing, but he found rather disliked the experience, so he didn't plan on doing so anytime soon. He eyed a nearby building and headed quickly towards it to protect himself from the unpleasant itching as his skin started to peel and burn. He grabbed the handle of the door and found it locked. With a grunt of annoyance Gaulg kicked the door in and wandered into the shade of the building. Gaulg found a corner to sit and began to relax and think.

Last he remembered that blasted mage sealed he away in that infernal prison. After who knows how long Gaulg finally had manage to escape somehow but he could not recall how. With a frown he leaned against a nearby wall and considered what he wished to do next. His kingdom was no doubt gone after all these years of imprisonment, so even if it was in the same dimension as him, looking for it so that was a pointless endeavor.

He supposed he could rebuild his kingdom in this city, but the idea did not particularly appeal to Gaulg. Revenge then? The mage was no doubt lurking around here somewhere, but that could lead to being imprisoned once more.

As he sat there his bones began to creak and his flesh expand, as his host body began to be reshaped by Gaulg essence. His body expanded by several meters and bone spines grew out his body jutting out in all directions. Then came the inevitable hunger for flesh, intense and painful as usual, he would need to feast soon. Judging from what he saw of the city there shouldn't be much problem acquiring food. Gaulg waited patiently for the sun to set before getting to his feet and wandering into the night.

Gaulg cast a invisibility spell on himself and crept through the street looking for a meal. After a few minutes he spotted a human man walking alongside of one of the many roads. Despite his large form Gaulg moved silently behind him and dominated the man's mind. "Tell me about this place." Gaulg ordered. Gaulg listened with interest as the man described this odd city. Asking the occasional question Gaulg got a clearer and clearer picture of what to expect.

"Bring me to your family, I need something to eat." he commanded. He felt the man's mind try and rebel against him much to his amusement, but the man's will was not strong enough to resist Gaulg's might.

Later as Gaulg sat munching on the remains of the smaller more useless humans he decided on his course of action. He would find and kill that pathetic mageling that thought he could bind Gaulg. First though he would need servants and resources, he would not underestimate them again.

He ordered the man and his woman to approach him. He then grabbed a hold of them and began to drain their souls out of their bodies. Right before he devoured the last drops of their essence he dropped them on the ground. He watched as the virus spread through their still living bodies slowly changing them. As they writhed on the ground screaming Gaulg dreamed of vengeance.

You wake up with your face lying in your own drool, yuck. Ugh, your head is pounding as well. You flip off you ability to feel pain like any sensible person would do in face of a headache. What were you doing again? You appear to be in your room but you were sleeping on the ground instead of your mattress for some reason. Did you get drunk and pass out? You don't remember drinking any booze.

As you try and remember what is going on you notice a giant bee twitching on the ground a bit to left. Huh. How did that get there again? You suddenly remember the bee shaman and their shenanigans. You decided to merge with the insects hive mind to track down the bee shaman. Wow looking back at it, that was a terrible plan. So many things could have gone wrong, good thing you only passed out and nothing else happened. Yep.

Well you did find the bee shaman at least. She was in some room in some house before you passed out. Actually now that you think it about that is completely useless information. On the other hand you know what she looks like physically and spiritually, so that is something at least. Hmmm. Well the bee shaman seemed to think that she knew you and you have been having memory problems lately, so maybe your dad would know who she is. As you head out to find him you skewer the bee before it can recover since you can't think of any possible other use you could have for it.

You wander around your forest of ash until you stumble upon your dad and Mt. Flufflekins. "Hey Dad quick question. Do you know a teenage girl with red hair that apparently knows me? Her name starts with a E, I think."

Your dad blinks and asks "You mean Emma?"

"Yeah I think that's what she said her name was or something." you reply.

Your dad gives you a confused look and says "Taylor we talked about her only yesterday, don't you remember?" At your blank look he continues "You said she killed you and put in a coffin."

You... don't remember that conversation, but you can't think of why your dad would make something like that up, so you'll take his word for it. "Right. So uh were does she live again?" you ask pulling out you map.

Your dad lets out a sigh and looks at your map. He points to her lair and says "Why are even looking for Emma anyway?"

"She has entangled herself with forces beyond mortal understanding and I need to put her out of everyone's misery." you say as you take your map back.

Your dad makes a choking noise and says "I... look Taylor I know that you're angry with her. Hell, I am furious at her but you can't just kill her."

You blink in confusion and say "Angry with her? I don't really know her. I mean I know that she has at least fed the souls of few dozen people to insect spirits, which is bad, but I wouldn't say I hate her or anything. It's just she going to keep killing people because she is crazy as a shit house rat. All insect shamans are."

Your dad seems thrown off for some reason. Did he not know that bee shamans kill people? "Oh."

You pat him on the shoulder and say "Don't worry about it okay? I'll take of this problem lickety-split." Your dad just gives you a jerky nod but does not say anything. You go looking for the Hollow Man ready to tell him the good news. As you are moving through the trees of your forest you nearly bump into the Transporter.

Your eyes widen in horror. Oh no, you are not prepared for this at all! You need to think fast on your feet."Um..." you say as you try to read her mood. Judging by her face you would go with chilly. Okay not great but you are pretty sure she isn't about to explode on you, you can work with this. Now that she is calmer you can at least explain what happened. "I am really sorry about what happened before, I wasn't myself-"

She lets out a mirthless snort and says scornfully "Yeah I like I haven't heard all this shit before."

Shit. Okay you could have worded that better. You fidget a little as you try again. "I am not saying it wasn't my fault because it was, but I feel like I should explain what happened because-"

"Lee already told me what happened." She says cutting you off. "You have voices in your head and you decided in your infinite wisdom to do what they told you to do, because you're a fucking crazy bitch."

"That's... not inaccurate." you force yourself to admit. "But the voice was controlling my body and I had to fight it back for control and-"

"But you gave it control you in the first place, right?" she says heat entering her voice.

"Um yeah I-" you start but she cuts you off again.

"So you fucking decided to give control to some voice in your head with me in the room, without warning me or anything, fuck you." she says getting angrier. You feel tears prickling at your eyes. This isn't going well at all. "Don't you start crying!" she hisses at you. "You're not the victim here and I am not the bad guy!"

You began to feel dizzy and have trouble thinking. You scramble to think of something to say to defuse the situation and blurt out the first thing that pops into your head "Hit me!"

"What?" she says taken aback.

"Hit me." you say repeating yourself. You flip on your ability to feel pain and continue "I hit you so it only fair-" you are cut off when she slugs you across the face. You stagger back a bit and spit out some blood. Oh looks like a tooth came out too. Huh. The Transporter is stronger then she l- She punches you again this time right in the eye knocking you of your feet. You slam your head on the ground and lay there stunned.

The Transporter makes a feral noise and kicks you in the side and you feel one of your ribs crack. She keeps kicking you until she runs out of steam. You let out a muffled groan and lie there in pain. She stares down at you panting for breath when she finally speaks "Shit. Shit, you alright?" You manage to raise your none broken arm and give her a thumbs up since your pretty sure that your jaw is also broken. She lets out a snort but this time it is not so angry.

She sits down next to you with a sigh and stares off into empty space with a unsure look on her face. After a few minutes she finally speaks "God this is so fucked up." You give a half shrug and hold in a whimper of pain. "I am still pissed at you, you know that right." You consider nodding but decide against it and give her another thumbs up. She blinks and asks "Can you even talk right now?". You give her thumbs down. "Shit. I kind of lost control and went overboard. Fuck, Lee is going to murder me."

You flip of your ability to feel pain and sit up against a tree and say "I'll talk to him, don't worry."

She blinks and says "I thought you said you couldn't talk."

"Well my jaw is broken but I turned off my ability to feel pain briefly so you wouldn't panic." you say.

She looks uncomfortable and says "You can heal yourself okay? I didn't mean to hurt you so badly."

You consider telling her no, that you deserve to be like this, but decide against it. She clearly is uncomfortable seeing you like this and ignoring her wishes would be frankly counterproductive to repairing your relationship. You flood your body with necrotic energy and your wounds close. You switch on your pain sensors to make sure that you didn't miss anything. You don't feel anything off with your body so you think you reversed all of the damage.

The two of you sit there in awkward silence for few moments before you finally speak up "I uh need to get heading out, so you see you around." She gives you a absent nod and you scurry away to find the Hollow Man. Well that could have gone worse, it could have also gone a lot better, but you'll take what you can get. At least you know that she doesn't hate you, since seeing you hurt upset her and all. You decide to put aside the whole Transporter issue for now and instead focus on more immediate problem of the bee shaman.

After another minute you find the Hollow Man speaking quietly into a talky box. "...all I am willing to say. It is your decision to chose to listen to my information or not." He then hangs up his talky box before looking up at you and says "Found out what you needed to know?"

"Yep I know what she looks like and where she lives so let's get going!" you say. As the two of you make your way towards the exit you ask "Hey who were you talking to anyway?"

"The PRT." he replies.

"What." you say your voice flat. Why is the Hollow Man talking to _them._ You know that he would never betray you, so something fishy must be going on. Have the brainwashed him when you weren't looking? How dare they!

"They need to know about the bee parahuman in case the situation gets completely out of hand." replies the Hollow Man. "I know that you do not like them after what happened yesterday, but it is important that they are informed."

You scowl and say "What use are they going to be? They don't even believe in magic and they don't know the first thing about how to defend against spirits."

The Hollow Man merely shrugs and says "It's better that they are aware of the problem then unaware."

Ugh whatever, you don't even care anymore. However you should check the Hollow Man for brainwashing at later date. When you get to exit you summon Moves-Like-Wind and have him boost you and the Hollow Man. Speed is of the essence after all. You throw the standard non-detection package over the three of you before you head out. The three of you make good time and arrive at the bee shaman's house in about fifteen minutes.

Yep this is the right place. You can see Erica's wards up around the house. Staring at the house causes weird and uncomfortable feeling to bubble up inside of you. But you stamp them down viciously. You don't have time for whatever those are, you got insane people to kill. You decide to survey the surrounding area before heading in. You don't see any bee spirits floating around. In fact you don't see any sign of life now that you think about not even a bird or a doggie. Unfortunately you and your companions can't pass through the wards without smashing them alerting her to your presence. So you will want to make sure your ready before entering.

You turn to the Hollow Man and say "Right, so her base has wards around it so we can't enter it without alerting her to our presence. So we should talk about attack strategies and stuff before entering." The Hollow Man makes a gesture for you to continue so you say "I am pretty sure that all her true spirit bees are gone so it should only be flesh-formed and hybrid bees left."

"What are those?" asks the Hollow Man.

"Flesh-formed look like normal people but are tougher and stronger. Hybrids will be people that have with bee mutations they are physically more dangerous than the flesh-formed. Your grenades should be more than enough to hurt them though so you should be fine long as you move quickly and are careful. Actually can I have some grenades?"

The Hollow Man gives you a level look before saying "No."

"But 'splosions Hollow Man!" you whine.

"Not happening." he says stubbornly, the jerk.

"Why noooooooot?!" you pout.

"I am not handing you explosive devices that I am fairly certain you would accidently set off and blow yourself up with." he says unrelentingly.

You cross your arms and glower "Fine. Anyway we are going to want to move quickly since if we take her out the bees will lose cohesion, but we also don't want to get overwhelmed so we are going to make sure we clear an area before moving forward. Sound good?"

The Hollow Man considers your plan before asking "How many do you think will be in there?"

"Um hard to say, but judging from the lack of life in the area she must of got most of the neighborhood. So thirty-fifty bee people maybe. They will probably have things like guns and stuff since the bee shaman got control of Chocobo. I can dodge gunfire pretty easily myself, how about you?" you say with a shrug.

"People usually have trouble tracking me due to my clones, but I can't dodge gunfire." he replies.

"Oh. Just a sec." You cast a couple spells on the Hollow Man and then say "I placed a couple of shielding spells on you to help keep you safe. They won't stop the bullets but it should make harder for them to hurt you. So I am going to summon a spirit and have it smash the wards. It will let us know if it is a trap or anything."

"Shouldn't we go in invisible?" asks the Hollow Man.

"It wouldn't really do any good. They can see astral space and invisibility would make us more obvious instead of less. Ready?" you ask. When he gives you a nod you dismiss Moves-Like-Wind and summon the spirit of the neighborhood so it can avenge its people. Cul-De-Sac floats up next to you and you ask it to go inside and attack the hive. It bulldozes through the wards and after about ten seconds the entire house explodes outwards knocking you and the Hollow Man off your feet.

You sit up and look over at the Hollow Man to make sure he is alright. He appears to be uninjured and getting back up to his feet so you turn your attention back to the remains of the house. Cul-De-Sac is floating above the ruins looking bored. It comes back over to you and informs you that it only found a single bee on the second floor and after it killed the bee the whole house exploded for some reason.

You guess the bee shaman knew that you were coming and left a trap behind. "Well looks like I am going to have to track her down the old fashioned way."

"And what's that?" asks the Hollow Man.

"Asking for somebody who knows anything about tracking for help." you reply and then turn to Cul-De-Sac and ask it if it knows where the bee shaman went. Cul-De-Sac shrugs and replies that it had been asleep until you woke it up so it has no idea where the bee shaman could be. You give it a quick thank you before you summon Ruins-of-Childhood.

It looks extremely disgruntled probably since its domain just got blown to smithereens. When you try to ask Ruins-of-Childhood where the bee shaman went it rather snappily replies that how should it know it was in its metaplane at the time. It glowers at you and asks if you had anything to do with its house being blown up. You evade looking it in the eye and give it quick good bye before dismissing it.

Well that was a bust hmmm. Oh! You can ask the Diviner to divine the answer for you. That is what diviner do after all. You turn to Hollow Man and say "Well we should head back to Necropolis."

"The what?" asks the Hollow Man in confusion.

How can the Hollow Man not know about the Necropolis? He has been living in there for almost two weeks now. Sometimes the Hollow Man can be so oblivious. "The floaty base." you say with a raised eyebrow.

He raises an eyebrow right back at you and says "Have you ever told anyone it was called that?"

"Sure I did! I told let's see here... the T- wait no... um. Well I am sure I must have told someone." you say uncertainly.

"I am sure your sure you have." says the Hollow Man in complete sincerity.

"Anyway now that is settled let's get going." you say quickly.

You resummon Moves-Like-Wind and head back to your base swiftly. Once there you head back to kitchen to see if the Diviner is still there. As you walk into the room the Diviner lets out groan and buries her head in her arms. Your apprentice speaks up and says "So did you take care of the bees then?"

"Ah... no. The bee shaman knew I was coming and rigged her place to explode for when I showed up. So the trail is cold once more." you say.

"Great." grumbles the Puppeteer "I am never going to get my video games back."

"Uh where those in your base or something?" you ask nonchalantly.

"Oh god what happened to our base?" asks the Diviner.

"Wellllll it may have collapsed in on itself after I left it. I am not sure why it did that but I think we can safely say it wasn't my fault." you say.

The Beef Cake glares at you for some reason and looks ready to explode before stalking out of the room. While the Puppeteer bemoans the fate of his couch you turn to the Diviner and say "So Diviner I need you to do some divining for me so we can track down the bee shaman."

The Diviner lets out a gusty sigh and say "Fine. Give me all the information you know about them."

"Let's see here... She has red hair, about my age, and had a name that started with an E."

The Diviner just stares at you before saying "I need way more information than that to figure anything out."

"My dad seems to know who she is, he might be able to help." you say. "Here, I'll bring you to him."

She makes a face and says "There is no way in hell I am going out there again. Bring your dad here."

You frown at her rudeness but you go to get your dad anyway. After a couple of minutes you find your dad. "Did you... kill her?" he asks hesitantly.

"No. She had already left her base by the time I got there. I have someone here who might be able to find her, but she needs to talk to you." you say. Your dad gets to his feet and he and Mt. Flufflekins follow you back to the kitchen. As the Diviner starts grilling your dad for information he has on the bee shaman you get the feeling this may take awhile.

You turn to Gandalf and say "We should really start up your lessons now that you are here."

"Sweet." says Gandalf, perking up with interest."So you going to teach me some bitchin' spells? Because I always wanted to able to throw fireballs around."

"Nope! First thing we got to do is get your lodge set up, can't teach you anything without one." you say.

"Shit. That takes 12 hours right." they say deflating.

"Mmmmhmm." you hum. "Well let's get started then." You and Mt. Flufflekins walk out to the main area with your apprentice trailing behind you despondently. You and your apprentice grab your leftover supplies from your earlier lodge making and head into a unused side room.

It's pretty dusty in here so you cast a quick cleaning spell. You sit in a nearby chair and it starts rolling away. You flail your arms around in surprise and scream "Aaaah Gandalf help! My chair is haunted!" Mt. Flufflekins lets out a cheep of alarm.

"Uh T that is just roller chair." says Gandalf in bemusement.

"Huh?" you say. You look down and sure enough your chair has little wheels on the bottom, neat. "Oh. Well that's a relief. The last cursed chair I sat in made it so I had to eat with my butt and poop with my mouth. It was terrible. Anyway time for you to get started."

"How?" says Gandalf unsure.

You shrug and say "Just listen to the songs in your head and follow the tune."

"Yeah, I don't have those." says Gandalf.

"Really? Hmmm. Look through the bags and try to find things that speak to your being. You then infuse them with your essence and places them around the room. The whole room should eventually be saturated with your magic and the objects you enhanced will help focus it."

Gandalf looks unsure but does what you tell them to. After a few minutes they start fiddling with some strips of leather and feathers. Seeing that they got things well in hand you start to play around in your chair. While Mt. Flufflekins sits in your lap you race back and forth across the room making wooshing noises. Giggling to yourself you spin around in circles until you feel dizzy and fall of the chair with Mt. Flufflekins. You hear a snort of laughter and see the Puppeteer looking in through the door.

"Hey boss is there anything to do around here. Getting kind of bored." he asks.

You puff out your cheeks in thought as you roll off your stomach on to your back. As Mt. Flufflekins repositions himself on your stomach you say "Um not a lot really. I got some art supplies over there if you're interested in that kind of thing."

The Puppeeter throws himself in to a nearby rollie chair and says "Nah, not really in the mood. So you don't even have T.V.?"

"What's a T.V.?" you ask.

He lets out a dramatic gasp and says "You poor poor soul! T.V. is probably the greatest invention made by man."

"Nuh uh. That's booze." you say.

"Got any?" he asks with interest.

You deflate and say "No some asshole fairy drank all of it."

"Oh yeah that was on the news wasn't it." says the Puppeteer. The two of you stew in disappoint and hatred of jerks that hog all the booze. Well that's what you are doing anyway, you have no idea what the Puppeteer is thinking. The three of you sit and watch your apprentice work on her lodge for a few minutes. Every once in awhile you shout out helpful tips when she seems lost.

To be honest though it isn't really that interesting to watch your apprentice work. You have seen masters of the arcane arts create breath taking and mind shattering works of art and while your apprentice isn't bad, it is pretty dull to watch them after awhile. You wrack your brain for any activity that you can do while making sure Gandalf does not tear a hole in reality or anything. You swivel back in forth in your chair looking around the room for something to entertain you when you realize that you have everything that you could possibility need right here.

You raise your hand and point your finger at the Puppeteer "I challenge you to a duel of chairmenship!"

The Puppeteer blinks before saying with a smirk "What are your terms?"

"We ride these magical rollie chairs and try to demount the other. The first one to fall of their throne is found to be loser." you declare.

"Hmmm. If I win you buy me a new entertainment system." the Puppeteer replies.

"And if I win..." you start before trailing of in thought. What do you want? Well you want to fix things with the Transporter, but you have a feeling the emotions aren't the Puppeteer thing what with his para-spirit is numbing his own emotions. You can't send him on a booze run because of the bees. Hmmm. "You have to be my friend forever and ever!"

The Puppeteer gives a snort and says "Deal."

The two of you roll to opposite sides of the room before turning to face each other. You place your feet on the ground and pick up speed quickly. As you are about to collide with the Puppeteer you pull your legs up. The two of you bounce of each other, sending each other spinning around the room. You let out a giggle as you zoom past Mt. Flufflekins, who lets out a cheep of encouragement. You quickly plant your feet on the ground to regain control and move to attack once more.

As you pick up speed you see the puppet jerk behind the Puppeteer and a thin strand of magic latches on to your leg. Your leg spasms and you lose control of your chair. The Puppeteer smashes into you before you regain your bearings. You feel your chair tip over and began to panic. As your chair falls to the side you tighten your grip on the chair so you stay on. You then lean into the fall and kick out with one of your legs into the ground. With the combined momentum of the fall and the force kick you send the chair twirling into the air while you are still seated. You do a 360 spin in the air before landing the chair back on the ground upright.

Mt. Flufflekins let out a cheer as you turn to face your opponent. "Cheater!" you accuse.

"Nowhere in the rules does it say I can't do that." the Puppeteer counters with a grin. Gods damn it. He is right. Well you have no one to blame but yourself for not seeing such a obvious loop hole. "By the way nice moves." You puff up in pride only for him to ram into you again while you are distracted. At the look of indignation on your face the Puppeteer chuckles "All's fair in love and war, boss!"

How dare he! You glare at him until you realize that since he is using his powers you can use yours. You give him a savage grin causing him to falter before you summon Crypt-Keeper, the spirit of your base. She boosts the speed of your chair and binds you to your chair so you can't fall off. "Ready or not here I come~" you say before launching yourself forward like a rocket.

You smash into him sending him and his chair flying into the air. Before he can reach the ground you slam your feet into the ground and change direction slamming into his chair again keeping him in the air. You spend a another twenty seconds juggling him in the air before he loses grip on his chair and goes flying into Gandalf. They fall into crumpled heap and you roll over to make sure that they are alright. "Sorry! Gandalf that was accident! You okay?"

"Yeah." groans Gandalf as they get to their feet. You poke them and heal a bruise that would eventual form if left untreated.

The Puppeteer grumbles as he gets to his feet "Aren't you going to ask if I am okay?"

You sniff and say "Nope. Since I am the queen of all things chair and so defeated you soundly, you're my friend now forever and ever." The Puppeteer lets out a huff of laughter and you give him a grin. "Want to go another round? This time without magic. Double or nothing!"

"How do you get double friendship?" he asks amused.

"You have to be my bff." you explain

"Sure." he says with a shrug. The two you clash in another epic dual. The Puppeteer fights valiantly but in the end your superior skill wins out. You breathe heavily covered in sweat as you grin victoriously at your latest conquest. He rammed into you quite vigorously but you were able to take control when you started plowing him with all your might. It got very intense before the end when both your thrusts got longer and harder, you are quite sure that you will both be sore the next morning. At the climax his body gave out, while you were ready for another round. You shake your head in disappointment, men tire so easily. You leap from your chair and dance the dance of victory.

The Puppeteer snorts at your antics and shakes his head "You're such a dork."

You let out a scandalized gasp and say "I am not a penis! I don't even have one! I know for sure because I checked quite thoroughly the other day! Your just jealous of my chairmenship!"

"Whatever you say... dork." says insubordinate jerk.

"Laugh it up." you say with a glare "But when I buy myself that T.P. thing you can't use it!" He just gives you a insufferable smirk. You give a huff of annoyance and walk over to Gandalf to check their progress while ignoring the Puppeteer's laughter. After making sure that they are on the right track you say "Hey I need to go check up with the Diviner and my dad. Will you be okay on your own for a bit?"

Gandalf looks up from their work and gives you an absent nod "Yeah I got this shit on lock." You have no idea what that means but it sounded like a affirmation , so you just nod and make your way back to your dad with Mt. Flufflekins.

You walk into the kitchen to see your dad watching with bemusement as the Diviner is hitting her head on the table. "Things going well?" you ask.

"No." mumbles the Diviner "Your dad hasn't talked to Emma Barnes in almost two years. The only recent thing he knows is that she hurt you in some way. I know the details of the attack on you from earlier research, but since you are having a memory block I can't make a good projection of her personality. Are you sure you can't remember anything about her?"

You consider the Diviner's request seriously before saying "Well I don't know a lot about her per say but I know stuff about insect shamans, would that help?"

"Maybe." says the Diviner neutrally.

"Well I can't be certain how long that she has been at large." you begin.

"At most a week." says the Diviner.

"Um okay." you say blinking in surprise "So when she first started out she probably grabbed the nearest people she could get her hands on and fed them to her insects."

"Her parents." adds the Diviner.

"Jesus Christ." says your dad with a pained expression. Did he know them or something?

"She then would start working on converting her neighbors. She would try and make them look human as possible so nobody would notice as she made her way through the neighborhood. She would also grab people that nobody would notice when they go missing, like the homeless. She would be less careful with them and allow them to have mutations so she could have shock troopers." you say.

"How many people could she convert in a week." says the Diviner as if she dreading the answer.

"I'm not sure. You see, I saw at least thirty of the bees, which is far more then she should be able to produce in a week, so something weird is going on. But if she had thirty or so true spirits she would have about twice that with her disguised servants." you say.

"Shit." mutters the Diviner.

"Since she had to abandon her hive and it will take her a day to set up a new one before she can start converting people again. Hmmm she is going to be looking for a place that is defensible but would allow her access to large amount of victims." you continue.

"You talked to her right, is there anything she said that could have been a hint of what she is up to?" asks the Diviner.

You consider your brief conversation with the bee shaman before saying "Well she said something about me ruining her plans somehow. If I had to guess she is trying to nab soul-bound for her hive. Also she seemed really mad when I didn't know her so I think she might be a tad obsessed with me."

The Diviner sighed and said "Well that's better than nothing. You got a computer up here? I'll need it for research."

"A what?" you ask confused.

The Diviner lets out another sigh and buries her face in her hands.

While the Diviner is grumbling about airheaded morons for reasons that escape you, you ponder your relationship with the bee shaman. Everyone seems to think that you should know who she is, so it does seem odd that you can't remember her. You seemed to have at least known her for at least two years from what the Diviner was saying, so it is a bit odd that you are drawing a complete blank. Hmmm. Maybe you should delve into the deep recesses of your mind to figure out this puzzle. What could possibly go wrong?

You breathe in and out as you focus on the idea of Eliza Borns, your old friend. Your body start to relax as your breath slowls and your mind starts to focus. You feel something fighting against you but you plow right past their objections as you search for the lost memories. You feel you typhoon of emotions slam into as you remember your best friend/sister/bully/betrayer. Hate/ nostalgia /longing/confusion flood your body overwhelming you. You don't like these feelings at all.

With the memories of Emma returning you remember rest of the Barnses. They failed you but you still cared for them in your own way and Emma... Oh god Emma killed them. She fed their souls to terrible alien beings and they were gone forever. They were your family how could she- You blink in confusion what were you doing again? The Diviner seems to covered in vomit for some reason. She is just sitting there with shell shocked expression on her face not moving. "You okay?" you ask. She does not seem to hear you, that or she is being very rude.

Your dad looks at you with concern "Taylor are you okay? Do you need to lie down?"

"Um no? Why wouldn't I be okay?" you ask confused.

"You just vomited on Lisa." your dad says looking worried.

Huh. You don't remember doing that? Did she say she was hungry or something, and you decided to feed her? You try to recall what you were doing again. Let's see here.. oh that right you were trying to remember who Evana Bottles was. You focus on trying to remember who she is and suddenly a violent storm of emotions hits you- You blink as the Diviner screams "What the ever shitting fuck!" For some reason she covered in vomit. "Stop vomiting on me!"

You give your dad a disapproving look. He really shouldn't vomit on people without their permission. Anyway you turn your mind back to task of remembering Eva Bears and OH GOD YOUR GOING TO BE SICK- "Whyyyyy?" moans the Diviner sopping wet from what appears to be large amount of vomit.

"You okay?" you ask her concerned. Why in the world would she cover herself in vomit? Well she is crazy so you can't say your surprised.

She just stares at you as if though she wants to strangle someone to death. "Get out!" she hiss at you. You get the feeling she mad at you for reasons that you can't discern so you decide that you should give her some space and scurry out of the room.

You're not sure what all that was about but you should probably think of a way to make up for whatever it is you did to offend her. Maybe she is sensitive about the fact that her skin spews vomit? Well whatever it is you did, your sure it what was just a misunderstanding and you will be able to clear it up in no time. You briefly consider checking up on your apprentice but change your mind. You didn't hear any explosions or dimensional breaches opening in the last ten minutes so your sure they are fine. Anyway you really want see the doggies so you go looking for the Dire Wolf.

You find her in the corner of the main room with her pack. She glowers at anybody that approaches her and the pack, she must be shy or something, well it's up to you to make her feel welcome. As you walk up to her you wave your hand and say "Hi!" The Dire Wolf turns and gives you a grunt but does not say anything else. Yep, she is shy. You guess you just need to break the ice a little. "Um can I pet your doggies?"

She eyes you in silence for a minute before grunting out a "No." You deflate a little in disappointment about the lack of doggie petting. Jeez the Dire Wolf is hard to talk to. You try to think of a conversation starter but flail around a little bit. "Is there anything else?" she asks curtly.

"You got enough food for all your dogs?" you ask.

"Yes."

You bite the inside of your lip as look around the room for something to talk about. Your eyes land on her mate and his mate jr. You turn back to the Dire Wolf and waggle your eyebrows "So how long the two of you been together?"

The Dire Wolf stares at your face as if trying to solve some great mystery "A week." she says bemused but you can hear a note of happiness behind her usual gruff tone.

Ah young love! It warms your heart to see such a young couple find happiness. You sidle up to her and give her a sly grin "So he any good in the sack?" you ask mischievously.

She gives you a shrug and says "Sure." nonchalantly, but you see her lips twitch up a little. Success! You found a subject that the two you enjoy talking about. You prod her for details and the two of you began to talk about your sex lives. She is pretty new to the wonderful world of sex so you are more than happy to give her plenty of advice. Unlike your dad the Dire Wolf seems to be interested in your expert advice and asks you questions on occasion.

As the of you are talking about some of your favorite positions an idea occurs to you. "Hey dog-man could you track the bees by scent through astral space?" you call out. The dog-man cocks his head to side before nodding. "I think I got a idea for your first job." you eagerly. "I need you to track down the bee shaman is so I can gank her."

The Dire Wolf frowns at you and stares into your eyes. You make sure not to blink or look away as she does so. You don't need the Dire Wolf thinking that she can push you around. "How much?"

You're not to good with paper money stuff so you can only guess what would be a good amount. You of course don't let your uncertainty show on your face since the Dire Wolf would see that as weakness and rip your throat out with her teeth. What would be a good reward for a job like this? Hmmm. Well ten thousand is usually a good amount of money, unless the paper money is totally worthless like it should be. You decide to take the risk and go for it "Ten thousand."

The Dire Wolf walks over to her mate and they speak to each in the language of dog. Which you kind of understand a little since you are quite fluent in rat. It's not quite the same but you can usually get the gist of what they are trying to say. Right now you think they are saying the deal is good and they should take it or they plan on murdering you and just take the money. The Dire Wolf walks back and says "That works."

You give her a firm nod and say "I'll go get the Hollow Man and meet you at the entrance in ten minutes." She shrugs and walks over to her dogs, so you head out to find the Hollow Man. After a few minutes you spot him watching the Beef Cake from a distance. "Hey Hollow Man, I got a new lead!"

"That's good." he responds. "Where are we going?"

"Back to the house. The dog-man thinks he can track the bees to where ever they ran off to."

The Hollow Man frowns and says "I don't know if you are aware of this but, the police will be at the scene of the explosion by now and if they noticed anything odd they would have contacted the PRT. "

You scowl. Damn the PRT! Always pissing in your cornflakes! Well you suppose if you are sneaky enough you can avoid them or jus beat the ever loving shit out of them if they get in the way. Part of you is hoping that they spot you. "Well we can't rely on the PRT to track down the bee shaman. They can't even track me down. So we are going to have to work around them." you say.

The Hollow Man lets out a sigh but gives you a nod. The two of meet up with the Dire Wolf, the dog-man and two other doggies. You put up a notice-me-not field on all of you and call up your buddy Moves-Like-Wind to bring your companions to the ground and enhance all of your movement. When you all reach the ground the Dire Wolf starts to buff her dogs including the dog-man. The dog-man shifts back into his dog form and the Dire Wolf mounts him. Kinky.

Since you are going to be sneaking around the PRT you should probably make all of you invisible as well just in case. You grimace as your magic expands over all six of you, the strain of keeping six spells going is giving you a major headache. You fly above as the rest of them as they make their way across the rooftops. When you get to the ruins of the bee shamans base you spot a bunch of vans. You also see some PRT jerks hanging around and a woman dressed in red, white and blue. Behind her you see a humanoid made of steel and wood.

You turn to the dog-man and whisper "Right. So see if you can get the scent without alerting those assholes."

The dog-man gives you a nod and pads his way quietly towards the house, weaving its way through the PRT jerkbutts. You watch him sniff around the ruins and after a bit starts making his way away from the house. You all trail after him once he is out of sight of the PRT and after you are a good distance from them drop your invisibility spells. Gods it is a pain holding that many spells for long periods at a time.

The dog-man moves slowly as he follows the scent. After two hours you find yourself in front of a large building. It reminds you of something but can't think of what. Hmmm. Oh that's right, it's that temple you woke up in. What are the odds? "Jobs done?" asks the Dire Wolf.

You turn to the dog-man and ask "They haven't left the building yet right?"

The dog-man sniffs the air and walks around the building at a distance before returning to you. "She has not left." he grunts in astral space.

You give the Dire Wolf a nod and say "Yeah, jobs done." before turning back to the temple. It is a good spot really. If she already took over the local clergy she could nab visiting followers with ease. Since it is a established sun god temple people would not be suspicious until it was too late. To make matters worse since it is a sun temple there is no doubt a large amount of innocent people inside of it during the day that the bee shaman can take hostage. You're probably better of coming after the sun is set and it will be mostly deserted. Your pretty sure thanks to distance and your notice-me-not field that the bee shaman has not noticed you, so she won't know you found her already.

"Hey Hollow Man we should come back later tonight when it will mostly deserted." you say.

The Hollow Man nods and says "That is probably for the best. We don't need people getting between us and our target."

While sun god worshipers tend to be dicks to you and your fellow brother/sister undead, killing them unprovoked is still wrong. You consider putting up some sort of watcher to make sure she doesn't leave while you are gone, but unfortunately none of your spirit buddies can stick around if you leave, so no dice. You suppose you could ask the Hollow Man to stay here and keep watch for you, but decide against it. If the bee shaman spots him then he will be on his lonesome and he could get hurt. Unacceptable. "Okay lets head back." you say.

After half an hour all of you are standing inside of your forest with your companions. The Dire Wolf and her pack head off somewhere to the side, while you and the Hollow Man make your way to your room. On the way there the Hollow Man says "You should really consider contacting the PRT and letting them know where she is." You make a face at the Hollow Man and open your mouth to say something but the Hollow Man cuts you off "I know that you don't like them, but can we really afford to let a S-class threat get out of hand? If we can convince them to assist us then our chances of success will increase."

"I... I'll consider it." you say grudgingly. He raises a good point, but the PRT are treacherous especially the Construct and they might use this as a opportunity to attack you. You walk into your room to find your dad and Mt. Flufflekins there. Mt. Flufflekins lets out a cheep of excitement and flies over to you. You catch him in your arms and snuggle him close. "Hey Dad!" you say cheerfully. "We found her again."

Your dad gives you strained smile and says "That's... good. Where is she?"

"Some temple to a sun god." you say.

"What?" your dad says confused.

How was that unclear? You open your mouth to respond when the Hollow Man speaks up "She means Winslow." You do?

Your dad looks alarmed for some reason so you decide to reassure him "She only moved in today so and I plan on dealing with her tonight so the people of the temple should be fine. Well unless she set up multiple lodges beforehand and has been harvesting people from there the whole time. Turning the whole building into a giant hive." For some reason your dad fails to be unalarmed.

Well if first you don't succeeded try again. "Don't worry Dad I have a scheme brewing in my head. I will take care of everything." you say patting him on the shoulder comfortingly while giving him your best smile.

"What is your plan if I may ask?" questions the Hollow Man.

You turn to the Hollow Man and say "I am thinking of going in with you, me, the Dire Wolf and her pack since we are all the heavy hitters. The Puppeteers skill set is honestly not that useful in direct combat, it's much to situational. Also I don't think it would work on the bee people since their anatomy have mutated far too much. The Transporter is pretty squishy so she is staying here, although she does have a mean right hook." you say rubbing your jaw. "And I don't think the Collector really likes fighting judging from my conversation with him."

"I am still considering asking the PRT for help." you add with a frown. "More people would be great, but that are all deceitful assbutts." If the bee shaman escapes again she might realize that you can track her down quickly. At that point she will start to act like a cornered bee and start doing more and more crazy things to escape you. So more bodies would only help unless of course they decide to attack you instead of the bee shaman. If only you could divine their thoughts...

You slap your forehead in exasperation and stand up. "Be back in a bit. I need to go ask the Diviner something quickly." you say calling over shoulder as you leave the room. You make your way to the kitchen quickly and look in. You see the Diviner muttering to herself while fiddling with a talky box. It looks like she got a change of clothes and washed all the vomit off of her while you were gone. The kitchen table is now covered in sheets of paper with notes scrawled across them. "Um hey." you call out from the door way "Can I come in? I got news and stuff."

The Diviner looks up at you with a blank face before sighing and motioning for you to come in. "So I would like to apologies for earlier." you say. You're not really sure what your apologizing for to be honest, but apologizing to someone is never a bad thing.

The Diviner eyes soften a little and she says "Let's just pretend it never happened. As long as you don't do it again we're fine." You give her a nod and hope you never accidently do whatever it is you did again. "So what do you have for me?"

"Well I managed to track down the bee shaman again with the help of the dog-man. She is in a temple called Winslow or something like that. I plan on attacking around midnight when the least amount of people should be there. I am considering talking to the PRT and asking for help, but I am sure if they will just get in the way or not."

The Diviner gives a hum while she thinks before saying "Well the bee parahuman is out of control, judging by what you said, she has killed around a hundred people in a week and it will only get worse from there, so the PRT would pretty eager to put her down. In situations like these they have been known to work with villains in the past so I am like ninety percent sure they would work with you."

"What do villains have to do with anything?" you ask baffled.

The Diviner smirks at you and says with sincerity "Oh honey, I hate to break it to you but you're a villain now."

"Wait what?! That can't be right! I am a hero!" you say flabbergasted. How could anyone think you are a bad guy?!

She pats you on the cheek and says with a foxy grin "The PRT announced your villain status yesterday after your breakout. You probably shouldn't have mastered a hero and then use them try to assassinate someone."

Damn the PRT! Now they are spreading malicious lies about you! You would never mind controlled any hero! Oooooh, you are going make them pay for that! Grinding your teeth together in rage you say "I see."

The Diviner looks at you in amusement and says "If you like I could arrange something with the PRT for you."

"That... that is probably for the best." you bite out. You're so angry right now your body is vibrating in rage. You doubt you could hold yourself together long enough to speak to PRT let alone convince them to work with you. You start to sing to yourself quietly to calm yourself down as the Diviner puts her talky box to her ear. "I would like to report a emergency." says the Diviner into her talky box.

As she is talking to whoever it is on the other side of the array you scheme of ways to get back at the PRT. If they are willing to spread lies about you, you should return the favor and spread truths about them. You don't doubt for a second that the PRT has been suppressing their more nefarious deeds from the public eye. Well you will just have to drag their secrets into the light where all can see. Their booze related heresy being the most important and damning. If people knew how the PRT worked against the sacred brew they would no doubt revolt and join your cause.

But how to spread the word? This city is probably one of the largest, if not the largest, on the continent. Reaching everybody would take a great deal of effort. Hmmmm. Wait the Shit Man must know a way of doing so since he is spreading your songs around and selling them. Actually weren't you making money off that or something? You should probably look into that as well now that you think about it.

"Hey they want to speak with you." says the Diviner shoving her talky box into your face.

You take the talky box from her and take a deep breath before saying "Yes?"

"This is Necros, correct?" says a stern sounding woman.

"Yes." you say again.

"I want you to understand that if this is a trap of any kind or that you betray us that the consequences well be severe." she says.

" I always tell the truth. I am not liar like you people." you say offended.

The woman seems to ignore your cutting remark and says "Give the phone back to Tattletale."

Who? Well since the Diviner was the last person to use the talky box the woman must mean her. You hand the talky box back to the Diviner and go back to thinking of ways to spread the good word. You know what you should do? Make another album. You can sing about the various crimes committed by the PRT in the form of song . All the people that bought your last album should buy your next one as well. You grin broadly as you combine two great passions of yours, song crafting and shit talking the PRT. You start humming to yourself as you write lyrics in your head.

After a few minutes the Diviner addresses you "Right so I set up meeting spot for you and the PRT." She then scribbles an address on a piece of paper and hands it to you. "This is the address you will met up with them at to discuss your plan. You will be meeting up with them at one am. You got all that?" she asks.

"Yep. Thanks for the help." you say gratefully. You check your talky box and see that that it is 4:15 pm. As you head back to your room to tell the Hollow Man the plan, you see that he was standing outside the kitchen waiting for you to come out. "So we are meeting the PRT here at one am." you say showing him the paper.

He looks over the paper and says "That should be fine."

As you walk into your room you let out a yawn. Your feeling pretty tired now that you think about it. Today has been emotionally and physically draining. "Hey I am going to take a nap. Can you wake me up when it is time to go?" you ask the Hollow Man.

"Go ahead and rest." replies the Hollow Man.

You flop down on your mattress and Mt. Flufflekins moves over to snuggle with you. As you close your eyes you say "Goodnight Dad. Goodnight Hollow Man. Goodnight Mt. Flufflekins."

Taylor rubbed her eyes sleepily as she sat up. As she sat on Mt. Flufflekins snout she listened to his soft, but at the same time loud, breathing as he slept. 'He must still be awake' thought Taylor. Taylor then turned her thoughts to what happened during the day 'Today had been... you know what? Forgot about today.' Taylor then shoved those thoughts down in the dark pits of her mind where they belonged.

Taylor got to her feet and made her way to archway. Part of her wanted to stay behind and just relax with her son, but she couldn't do that right now. She needed more power to deal with... the bee shaman. Yes, bee shaman. Maybe Rana knew something useful about insect shamans, she did have a library that seemed never ending surely she had books on the subject. As she reached the archway she took in the various songs and found some missing? Where was Rana?

Taylor's antenna drooped as she couldn't locate Rana. Where had her friend gone? That had been her favorite song too. It always made her feel like she could deal with her problems. Disappointed Taylor turned her attention to the other songs. Hmmm a couple others were missing as well, weird. Closing her eyes she tried to decide to which path to follow. What she needed most was a way of sneaking past the bee shaman's servants.

She needed to be something she wasn't and so focused on the song that pretended to be something that is wasn't. Listening to the song was a confusing affair, each note acted as though it was a different note. It was if though she was hearing two songs at once. The first being the illusion and the second being the true hidden tune. After walking for a minute she walked through the singers archway and found herself in a grassy field.

Across the field stones jutted out of the ground with symbols etched into them. Off to the side was a man, in what looked armor made of crystal, sitting on the ground humming to himself as he carved into one of the stones. Taylor flew up to him and said "Hello. I'm Taylor who are you?"

The man looked up at her before rising to his feet towering above her. He had to be at least seven feet tall. He then did a little dance, hopping from one foot to another, before ending in pose with his arms stretched out "I am Gremthaxel the Betrayer! I apologize in advance for my future treachery!" He then slips and falls on his face "Betrayed by my own body! Curse you, me! You handsome devil you!"

Taylor stared at him in disbelief. Was this some sort of act to get her to let down her guard? Well she wasn't falling for it. "That's great... Grundel?" she asked unsure. What was his name again.

"Gremthaxel the Betrayer." he corrected with a smile.

"Yeah that." Taylor said not really caring. Right she came here to ask him for help, although now that she thought about maybe asking a liar for help wasn't the best plan. Maybe she could bluff him into helping her?

Frowning Taylor said "Yeah I don't buy it."

Gremthaxel blinked and he scrunched up his nose in confusion before saying "Um what? What don't you buy?"

"I don't believe for a second you could trick anybody with a name like that. You must be the worst liar ever." said Taylor dismissively.

"What?!" exclaimed Gremthaxel. "How dare you! I am the greatest betrayer in the history of everything! I once tricked reality into doing my bidding! I betrayed gravity itself! My trickery knows no bounds!"

"Meh. All talk, no substance." said Taylor with disinterest. "You're so transparent you couldn't trick a small child."

"Not true!" said Gremthaxel wringing his hands in distress. "I can scam candy from a baby! I have done it plenty of times."

"Prove it." she said.

Gremthaxel tapped his chin in thought. "Hmmm. How do you suggest I do that?"

Taylor pretended to think about it for a minute before she said "I bet you can't trick me into learning the art of treachery. If you succeed in doing so only then will I admit your status as a betrayer. But if you fail you must teach me your tricks."

Gremthaxel didn't even think about it before yelling "Deal!" and stuck out his hand. When Taylor reached out to shake his hand he pulled it back at the last second "Too slow! Betrayed!" He then proceeded to do his dance his dance of treachery. Curse him. He then stuck his hand out again. This time Taylor's hand shot out like a snake but Gremthaxel danced out of the way once more. "Whoop! Feel the sting of betrayal!" He then proceeded to start dancing once more.

Taylor let out a roar of frustration and leap onto him. She gnawed on his head as she tried to grab on to his hand. After a few minutes of struggling Taylor finally managed to seize his hand. "Ha I win!" she declared "Now the challenge begins!"

"Phooy! Very well then." Gremthaxel sat on the ground and pulled out three cups. He then withdrew a rock, covered in markings, from empty air. "This a stone that contains the knowledge of Masking. It allows one to hide their true nature from those with the eye of the magi. I shall place it under these cups and then I will shuffle them." He placed the stone under the right most cup. "You then must choose a cup, if the stone is within you must take the stone and use it. We shall do this three times. If you pick up the stone I win and if you manage to evade the stone you win. Deal?"

Taylor smirked and said "Deal."

"THEN LET US BEGIN!" he bellowed. His hands then blurred as he shuffled the cups. Taylor tried to follow his movements but it got more and more complicated as it went on. He would sometimes shoot the stone between the cups and at one point started to juggle them. After exactly one minute he let go of the cups and said "Choose."

Taylor looked down at the cups unsure which one contained the stone, but in the end did it really even matter? Either way she got what she wanted. Shrugging Taylor reached out and grab the right most cup and lifted it, revealing the stone within. Forcing herself to keep the smirk off her face Taylor went to grab the stone when something occurred to her. She quickly reached out and flipped over the other two cups and saw that each one had a identical stone underneath them. "You cheated!" accused Taylor. She was not really sure why she cared at all, but it was the spirit of the thing.

"I did? How?" ask Gremthaxel in confusion with his cocked to his side.

"What do you mean how!? You put a stone under all of the cups!" she exclaimed.

"I fail to see how that matters." said Gremthaxel perplexed. He give her a odd look as though she was being the unreasonable one here.

"Of course it matters! There is only suppose to be one stone!" she argued.

"Hmmm. I don't remember saying that. I said I would put the stone under these cups and I did. I placed it under all these cups. " he replied. "You agreed to the terms when I laid them out."

Taylor opened her mouth to argue before realizing he wasn't wrong. Huffing she picked up one of the stones and looked down at it. Wait. How did she know that the stone did what Gremthaxel said it did. For all she knew it would turn her brain into mush. She quickly scanned the stone in astral perception and found that it did exactly what he claimed it did, but if it was stone of masking couldn't it mask what it truly did? She looked up at Gremthaxel who just smiled happily back at her.

This was terrible idea. What had she been thinking? Could she back out of the deal? She felt her body rebel against the very thought of going back on a deal, so no dice. She looked up at Gremthaxel again and saw that his smile had grown even wider. He had her trapped and they both knew it. She had underestimated this man, he was diabolical genius. Sweat started to travel down her back and her hands started to shake a she looked down at the stone. 'Stupid stupid Taylor! You always fuck everything up.'

"Well?" he prompted.

Gulping Taylor grip the stone in her hand and activated it. It was different from when she merged with Rana and Mr. Nibbles, instead of a intense stream of memories or a burning sensation, she felt as if a tight band wrapped around her brain. The pressure increased steadily and it felt like her brain would be ripped in two when the band snapped. Blinking Taylor tried to figure what had changed but she didn't feel any different. Of course she hadn't felt different after Rana did her thing either, so did that really mean anything?

Gremthaxel was once more on his feet doing his jig of deceit. "Haha! Betrayal at its finest."

"What-what did that stone do?" asked Taylor quietly. Her heart raced as she tried to stop herself from panicking.

Gremthaxel stood tall and smirked at her before saying "Exactly what I said it did and nothing else!"

"What." said Taylor.

"You see you were expecting a trap but there was never any trap at all. Thus I betrayed your expectations of what would happen. The most foul betrayal indeed!"

"I..." started Taylor. That was the stupidest thing she ever heard. This guy was an idiot. God she had been panicking over nothing.

"Now then since I taught you the fine art of treachery you must now admit that I am great betrayer!" he said as he broke into dance.

"Actually." said Taylor "You never taught me anything about treachery. You taught me concealment and that is it."

Gremthaxel lost his footing and landed on his face with a loud thud. "What- wait- no- I!" stuttered Gremthaxel.

"So that means I win." replied Taylor.

Gremthaxel looked like he was going to cry "Nooooo undone by my own hubris!"

"And since I said tricks you are required to teach me multiple things." she continued without mercy.

Sniffling Gremthaxel laid there on the ground for a moment before finding his voice "Very well then I shall take you on as my apprentice. Clearly you have the talent for the art of treachery and it would be a travesty to not teach you. Maybe you can even surpass my greatness."

Taylor considered his offer. On one hand he probably knew a lot of magic and tricks that would be useful, but on the other hand his name literally has Betrayer in it. Maybe giving him the title of master over her would be not a such great idea. She wasn't even sure what Gremthaxel was or that Gremthaxel was even really his real name. Who knew what crazy power she would accidently give him by saying yes. "Yeah, I am going to pass on that."

"What!?" he cried out offended. "Why not!?"

"Well mostly I don't trust you." said Taylor.

Gremthaxel just stared at her gob smacked "How can you not trust me?! It's the name isn't it. People are always judging me by name. The racists." He glowered at Taylor "You're a racist too, aren't you!?"

"I don't even know what race you are." replied Taylor confused.

"That's what make it so heinous!" declared Gremthaxel.

"That doesn't even make sense." said Taylor "And anyway I also don't trust you since you keep talking about how you betray people all the time and have tried to betray me multiple times in this very conversation."

Gremthaxel rolled his eyes and said "Now you're making excuses for you racism. Well you aren't going to fool me."

"Whatever." said Taylor "Look you still have to teach me some stuff per our agreement."

"Not till you apologize for your racism." replied Gremthaxel.

"You have to teach me. We had a deal." said Taylor impatiently. He was not going to weasel out of this deal.

"Actual we never stated when I had to teach you. So if you don't apologize I'll teach you after the heat death of the universe." said Gremthaxel.

"We'll both be dead by then." said Taylor getting annoyed.

Gremthaxel snorted and said "No I won't."

"Fine I am sorry." said Taylor.

Gremthaxel narrowed his eyes and said "For what?"

'Shit.' Taylor wasn't actual sorry for whatever slight Gremthaxel claimed to have felt. She was sorry she had to listen to his ramblings. "I am sorry for the heated words we exchanged." she said.

Gremthaxel stared at her face intensely before saying "Apology accepted."

"So you going to teach me something now?" Taylor asked.

"Nope." said Gremthaxel.

"When are going to teach me something?" Taylor said rephrasing her question.

"When I feel like it." he said with a shrug.

Taylor glowered at him and felt like stomping her foot. Stupid poopie head! "And what do you need to feel like it?"

"I don't know." he said slowly. "I will have to think about it and get back to you. I won't take more than a day. Deal?"

"Deal." said Taylor with a sigh. That was probably the best deal she was going to get out of him. At least he set a time limit this time.

Grumbling to himself, he flopped down on the ground and closed his eyes. Taylor rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. Gods who knew that he would be such a sore loser about this. Well hopefully he would get over this ridiculous mood and be useful again soon. After a few minutes of examining the nearby boulders Taylor felt herself waking up.


End file.
